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The Gospel of Beauty 

SAMUEL JUDSON PORTER, 

M.A., D.D. 



The 
Gospel of Beauty 

By 
SAMUEL JUDSON PORTER, 

M.A., D.D. 



WITH A FOREWORD BY 

REV. L. R. SCARBOROUGH 

PRESIDENT, SOUTHWESTERN BAPTIST 
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 



NEW xSJr YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



6 J? 



^£V5 1 



COPYRIGHT, 1922, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATE3 OF AMERICA 

APR 18 72 

©CU661327 
/vie I 



V 



This Book is Dedicated 
to My Daughters 

MARIE and ELOISE 



FOREWORD 

The lectures of this volume were delivered in 
the chapel of the Southwestern Baptist Theological 
Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas, by the Rev. Samuel 
Judson Porter, D.D., Pastor of the First Baptist 
Church, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on The Hol- 
land Foundation, a lectureship foundation estab- 
lished by Rev. Lewis Holland. Other lecturers on 
this foundation have been Dr. H. C. Mabie of 
Boston, Massachusetts, Dr. George W. Truett, Pas- 
tor of the First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas; Dr. 
W. L. Poteat, President of Wake Forest College, 
North Carolina ; Dr. John R. Sampey, Professor of 
Hebrew and Old Testament Interpretation, in the 
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, 
Kentucky. 

This volume of lectures came up out of the rich, 
spiritual, cultured life of a busy pastor. The effect 
of these lectures upon the faculty and students of 
the Southwestern Seminary was gripping and 
charming. In rich, terse, poetical English, with 
the breath of the Spirit upon the heart and the 

vii 



viii Foreword 

words of the speaker, these messages greatly moved 
and pleased the great audiences that heard them. 
They are sent out with the prayer that they shall 
carry enrichment and blessing to thousands of 
readers. 

L. R. Scarborough, 
Southwestern Baptist 
Theological Seminary 





CONTENTS 




I 


An Eye for the Beautiful . 


FAGS 


II 


Christ the Norm of Beauty . M , 


« *., 27 


III 


Transfigurations . . w • 


^2 


IV 


The Principles of Beauty . « 


1 • j~ 

, . 68 


V 


Beauty Released . M M , 


« « 86 


VI 


Spiritual Beauty Triumphant w , 


.. j.: IOO 



The Gospel of Beauty 



THE GOSPEL OF BEAUTY 

i 

AN EYE FOR THE BEAUTIFUL 

The Prevalence of Beauty 

"If you get simple beauty and naught else, 
You get about the best thing God invents." 

In these two lines Robert Browning gives a fresh 
setting to the definition that ' 'beauty is the pleasant 
expression of good." 

Beauty should be regarded not as an accident of 
form, not even as a mere robe of truth, but as a 
part of truth itself, a permanent principle with 
which God has seen fit everywhere to accompany his 
proclamation of truth. 

"What's true beauty but fair virtue's face, 
Virtue made visible in outward grace." 

Beauty is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds 
in the flowers of spring; it waves in the branches 
of the trees; it shines in the dew-tipped blades of 

13 



14 The Gospel of Beauty- 

grass; it haunts the depths of the earth and the 
sea, and gleams out in the dainty hues of the shell 
and the colors of the precious stone. The ocean too, 
and the mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, 
and the rising and setting sun all overflow with 
beauty. The world is its temple. The whole uni- 
verse is its sphere. Those who are alive to its charm 
cannot lift their eyes without feeling themselves en- 
compassed by it on every side. This beauty is so 
precious and its enjoyment so refined and pure, and 
so akin to worship, that it is painful to think of the 
multitudes who live in the midst of it but are as 
blind to it as if they were tenants of a dungeon in- 
stead of dwelling on this fair earth and beneath 
the glorious sky. In an address on the "Commercial 
Value of Artistic Excellence," William E. Gladstone 
has a passage of such appropriate worth that it is 
here given at length: "Beauty is not an accident of 
things, it pertains to their essence; it pervades the 
wide range of creation; and wherever it is impaired 
or banished, we have in this fact the proof of the 
moral disorder which disturbs the world. Reject, 
therefore, the false philosophy of those who will ask 
what does it matter, provided a thing be useful, 
whether it be beautiful or not; and say in reply, 
that we will take one lesson from the Almighty God, 
who in his works hath shown us, and in his word 



An Eye for the Beautiful 15 

also hath told us, that 'He hath made everything/ 
not one thing, or another thing, but everything, 
'beautiful in its time.' Among all the devices of 
creation, there is not one more wonderful, whether 
it be the movement of the heavenly bodies, or the 
succession of the seasons and the years, or the adap- 
tation of the world and its phenomena to the 
conditions of human life, or the structure of the 
eye, or hand, or any other part of the frame of man, 
— not one of all these is more wonderful than the 
profuseness with which the Almighty Maker has 
been pleased to shed over the works of his hands 
an endless and boundless beauty." 

The Appreciation of Beauty. 

Beauty is subjective as well as objective. Only 
the eye for beauty can properly discern beauty ; only 
the beautiful heart is able to apprehend the beautiful. 
Entranced in prayer, with eyes suffused with tears, 
Samuel Coleridge gazes on the beauties of Mt. 
Blanc and cries, as he closes his "Sunrise Hymn," 
"Earth with its thousand voices praises God." 

On the other hand, Lord Byron, gazing on the 
equal splendor of the Jungfrau, deplores his own 
barrenness of spirit and explains his lack of respon- 
siveness to the beauties which surround him by 
saying, 



16 The Gospel of Beauty 

"And thou, the bright Eye of the universe, 
That openest over all and unto all 
Art a delight — thou shin'st not on my heart" 

Among my treasures is a pressed daisy which I 
plucked from the grave of William Wordsworth. 
Once in a while when tired I look again at the tiny 
memento and read the poet's lines, "To the Daisy," 
one of the most exquisite pieces of poetry. In con- 
trast to the spiritual alertness which prompted this 
poem, is the sordid dullness of Peter Bell, whose 
base stupidity the same poet has described. 

"He roved among the vales and streams, 
In the green wood and hollow dell ; 
They were his dwellings night and day, — • 
But nature ne'er could find the way 
Into the heart of Peter Bell. 

"In vain, through every changeful year, 
Did nature lead him as before ; 
A primrose by a river's brim 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothing more. 

"At noon, when by the forest's edge, 
He lay beneath the branches high, 
The soft blue sky did never melt 
Into his heart, — he never felt 
The witchery of the soft blue sky!" 

There are telescopes, microscopes, spectroscopes 
and other instruments for assisting the eye in the 
vision of objects and phenomena. There is also 
a "theoscope" with which God and his glory 
may be seen. It is purity of heart. "Blessed are 



An Eye for the Beautiful 17 

the pure in heart; for they shall see God." As the 
patriot thrills to see his country in the flag ; the bride 
delights to see the constancy of love in the wedding 
ring; the Christian exults to see divine love even 
unto death in the cross, so the pure in heart possess 
a "theoscope" to see God everywhere, in creation, 
revelation, and providence. Looking through a 
smoked glass at a conflagration one sees the walls 
collapsing and the material falling without seeing 
the fire; so those with spiritual vision blurred fail 
to see God though they behold his works on every 
hand. The lens of the telescope must be ground 
with all exactness and polished with care lest the 
light-rays from sun or star be warped from their 
course. It is equally necessary that the heart be 
prepared to see God. Professor Agassiz being in- 
vited to look through the microscope of a celebrated 
scientist, paused and said : "Tell me what I am to 
see ?" The microscopist, highly pleased, answered : 
"You are a man after my own heart. You recog- 
nize that there must be a prepared mind to enable the 
eye to see rightly." We see what we expect or de- 
sire to see. Many have eyes but do not see the 
things that are visible to others. An imperious 
critic, gazing on one of Turner's gorgeous sky paint- 
ings, said, "I never see such colors in the sky as you 
paint." "Don't you wish you could?" replied 



1 8 The Gospel of Beauty 

Turner. "I never can begin to paint what I see." 
To discover beauty and yield to its spell is to pass 
through one of the most exquisitely delightful ex- 
periences of which the soul is capable. With many 
these experiences are rare, but when they do come, 
they are like some flowery oasis full of balmy 
fragrance and not easily forgotten. On one occa- 
sion some one, upon hearing Beethoven rendering 
his great pastoral symphony, said to the musician, 
"I have never heard sounds like that in the country." 
"Neither have I," replied the great master, "but that 
is how I felt when I was in the country." What 
great artists we would be if we could tell how we 
felt on this or that sweet memorable occasion. I 
should thrill you now with most exquisite delights 
could I make you know how I felt one cool evening 
of an early spring, years ago, when the unutterable 
harmonies of the ideal world arose in me complete 
as I listened to the gleeful warblings of a pair of blue 
birds that were building their nest in the hollow of 
a large apple tree, the fragrance of whose abundant 
blossoms filled the air. The notes of the birds, the 
perfume of the blossoms, and the beauty of it all, 
I cannot express. For a few moments I lived in the 
ideals of that better world which one feels but cannot 
describe. 

A similar though differently environed experience 



An Eye for the Beautiful 19 

stands out in my memory like some aureoled thing 
of infinite loveliness. So suddenly was I ushered 
into the ideal world of beauty that it seemed as if 
some intervening veil had been lifted, permitting me 
to stand face to face with aesthetic verities which had, 
until that precious moment, been obscured from my 
view, but with which my soul instantaneously 
claimed a fond familiarity. It was in mid-sea. 
Through the irksome days and nights of a week of 
most exasperating weather we had fought our way 
forward in the face of the storm. The day was at 
its finishing hour. Suddenly the winds ceased. 
The calm seemed heavenly in its vast completeness. 
Out from under the clouds our ship sped in gallant 
trim like a mighty arrow aimed at the setting sun. 
From my vantage stand on the deck I watched the 
prow centering the luring highway which shimmered 
and undulated softly over the crimson waves as they 
distanced on across the ocean's breadth until they 
seemed lost in the sunset's flaming splendors. Turn- 
ing round I saw the most gorgeous rainbow I had 
ever beheld which had already well nigh crescented 
into a perfect circle about the ship's stern. My 
soul leaped with exuberant gladness. At that mo- 
ment the iridescent arch seemed none other than the 
loving embrace of the infinite. The radiant avenue 
stretching away to the sun appeared like the road 



20 The Gospel of Beauty 

that leads up to the city of God, while the illimitable 
peace seemed as broad as the sea and the sky. In 
that sweet moment of my soul's response to God I 
felt that the appeal of the beautiful is the call of the 
good. 

The Expression of Beauty, 

To express the feelings awakened by these 
glimpses into the ideal world in such way as to im- 
press others for good — this is the true function of 
art. Something akin to this thought is expressed in 
the striking words of Shelley as he discourses on 
poetry. Says he, "Poetry lifts the veil from the hid- 
den beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects 
be as if they were not familiar." "For," to quote 
Browning again, 

"For, don't you mark ? we're made so that we love 
First when we see them painted, things we have passed 
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see ; 
And so they are better, painted — better to us, 
Which is the same thing. Art was given for that ; 
God uses us to help each other so, 
Lending our minds out." 

To express the soul's feelings accurately and 
pleasingly is the task of art, and when this is done 
in recognition of him who is the author of beauty 
and the source of noble feeling it is a high and holy 
mission worthy of all painstaking and arduous ef- 
fort, and calls for the fullest powers of heart and 



An Eye for the Beautiful 21 

hand as well as a vast variety of means and 
methods. 

Nowhere has there appeared a more sufficing de- 
lineation of the delicate task of expressing deep 
feeling than that given by Frederick W. Robertson 
of Brighton, who while one of the most celebrated 
orators of all times was himself a true artist. In 
seeking to illustrate the artistic position that poetry 
expresses indirectly what cannot be directly expressed 
he tells of the statue of a sleeping boy in a certain 
American town, which was said to produce a singu- 
lar feeling of repose in all who gazed on it. The 
history of the statue is this : "The sculptor gazed 
upon the skies on a summer's morning, which had 
arisen as serene and calm as the blue eternity out 
of which it came, he went about haunted with the 
memory of that repose — it was a necessity to him 
to express it. Had he been a poet he would have 
thrown it into words ; a painter, it would have found 
expression on the canvas; had he been an architect 
he would have given us his feelings embodied as the 
builders of the Middle Ages embodied their aspira- 
tions in a Gothic architecture; but being a sculptor, 
his pen was the chisel, his words stone, and so he 
threw his thoughts into the marble and called his 
statue 'Repose.' " Observe this was intense feeling 
longing to express itself. It was not enough to say, 



22 The Gospel of Beauty 

"I feel repose" ; infinitely more was to be said ; the 
only material through which he could shape it and 
give to airy nothing a body and a form was the im- 
perfectly expressive material of stone. Observe 
there was no resemblance between the sleeping boy 
and a calm morning; but there was a resemblance 
between the feeling produced by the morning and 
that produced by gazing on the statue. And it is in 
this resemblance between the feeling conceived by 
the artist and the feeling produced by his work that 
the imitation of poetry, or art lies. As Ruskin says, 
"Only that picture is noble, which is painted in love 
of the reality. ... If you desire to draw, that you 
may represent something that you care for, you will 
advance swiftly and safely. If you desire to draw, 
that you may make a beautiful drawing, you will 
never make one" This is variously illustrated by 
the different poets. Tennyson wishes to tell a sor- 
rowing world that gain may come out of loss. This 
is a noble and comforting message. A very prosaic 
man might deliver it, but his words would soon be 
forgotten. Tennyson clothes the sentiment in 
beautiful, picturesque language and sets it before us 
in pleasing, winsome form. He has expressed his 
message thus : "Men may rise on stepping-stones 
of their dead selves to higher things." Taken liter- 
ally these words are sheer nonsense. Accepted artis- 



An Eye for the Beautiful 23 

tically they convey a welcome message to those who 
have appreciation and the capacity for beauty. Sim- 
ilarly, in keeping with George Matheson's definition 
of poetry, "I am truth singing in disguise and un- 
conscious of an audience," Wordsworth clothes the 
immortal soul in the likeness of a setting and rising 
star. Longfellow pictures the decay of the physical 
heart to the beating of a funeral drum. Burns 
paints life's fleeting pleasures in the evanescent forms 
of the snowflakes. Landor makes the murmur of 
the shell its memory of an ocean home. Byron de- 
scribes a thunderstorm as a dialogue between two 
mighty mountains. Shelley discovers human exist- 
ence figured in a dome of vari-colored glass which 
"stains the white bosom of eternity." In harmony 
with these interpretations, so varied, yet so similar in 
essence, is the thought so beautifully expressed by 
Carlyle in his "Lectures On Heroes." "It is a man's 
sincerity and depth of vision," says Carlyle, "that 
makes him a poet. See deep enough, and you see 
musically; the heart of Nature being everywhere 
music, if you can only reach it." 

The Quest for Beauty. 

With the Greeks beauty was something divine 
and spiritual but they were never able to attain it 
with absolute satisfaction. Though their achieve- 



24 The Gospel of Beauty 

ments were marvels and models of beauty yet they 
seemed never to reach fully their ideals. Something 
was lacking. They longed for the spiritual and di- 
vine but did not find it. They put into the statues 
of their gods their highest conceptions of human 
beauty, but with all their skill they could not raise 
the human to the level of the divine. Into their 
Aphrodite they put all they knew of womanly charm ; 
into their Apollo, all they knew of manly grace ; into 
their Zeus, all they knew of royal majesty and dig- 
nity. But having done their best their gods after all 
were only human. The instinct, however, that made" 
them thus identify the divine with the beautiful was 
altogether correct. It was only the mode of expres- 
sion that was wrong. And yet they knew no other 
way in which to express themselves. They at- 
tributed physical beauty to their deities, and this they 
did because their conception of deity was material 
and human. It was on Mars Mill that Paul declared 
unto them that the "Godhead is not like unto gold, or 
silver, or stone, graven by art and device of man." 
God is a spirit, and the beauty that characterizes him 
is moral and spiritual. Beauty is a divine attribute. 
Here is the highest point-of-view of art. It is from 
the standpoint of beauty of character. It was 
Charles Kingsley, was it not, who in his dying hour 
was heard to quietly murmur to himself, "How 



An Eye for the Beautiful 25 

beautiful God is! How beautiful God is!" Per- 
haps the phrase "the beauty of God" may sound a 
little inappropriate and inharmonious, so that we do 
not often apostrophize God as did Augustine — "Oh, 
Beauty, so old and yet so new, too late I have loved 
Thee." Yet it is true that God is beautiful, and it is 
also true that the prayer, "Let the beauty of the Lord 
our God be upon us," finds answer in the gospel of 
"grace" and "glory" which is the Gospel of Beauty. 
Beauty is not to be despised. It is a divine principle 
ever expressing itself in color, form or movement. 
The highest beauty of all is the beauty of moral 
movement which found its perfection in the Beauti- 
ful Galilean, who is himself the Norm of Beauty. 

Plato, speaking with despairing sadness of the sins 
which were eating out the vigor and character of his 
people, said that there were three principles or moral 
forces which might possibly break up these evils. 
First, that of piety or love for a divine person ; sec- 
ond, the desire for honor or the respect for the good ; 
thirdly, the love of moral beauty — that not of the 
body but of the soul. He adds: "These be per- 
haps romantic aspirations, but they are of the noblest 
of aspirations, if they could only be realized in any 
state." These aspirations have* been realized in 
Jesus and more than realized. He offers not only 
an ideal of morals but throws in a force which 



26 The Gospel of Beauty 

human nature or evolution had never reckoned upon. 
In his own divine person are embodied all the quali- 
ties of moral beauty and at the same time through 
the wonders of grace he redeems men and elevates 
them to become partakers of his divine nature, so that 
whatever morality they may attain is only the blos- 
som and fruit of the life which he implants within 
them. In the unfolding of this life are fulfilled 
those romantic aspirations of which Plato speaks. 



II 

CHRIST THE NORM OF BEAUTY 

In common with others whose ideals expand and 
rise above them, the artist, in his quest of the par- 
tially revealed beauty of the universe, discovers that 
it flies before him as if to coax him on to a perfec- 
tion of loveliness which he can not fully attain. 
Beyond all that he achieves, or seeks for, or loves, 
there is the recognition of the infinite and unattain- 
able and a deep, persistent yearning for a closer ap- 
proach to it. Robert Browning, himself a true, 
spiritual artist, felt all this and gave it expression 
when he makes Abt Vogler say, after extemporizing 
with but poor success upon his musical instrument : 

"The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too 
hard, 
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the 
sky, 
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard ; 
Enough that he heard it once; we shall hear it by 
and by." 

Tantalized by this craving for the highest he de- 
scends to the level of his limitations to seek anew the 

norm of faith and action. Feeling eagerly for the 

27 



28 The Gospel of Beauty 

"common chord" again, and sliding over the keys 
"by semitones," at last he says : 

"Hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is 
found, 

The C Major of this life!" 

One cannot but ask where is the "resting-place" 
found? What is the C Major of life? the key-note 
of character? the norm of all moral beauty? For 
the musician, the painter, the poet, and may it not 
be said, for all others as well, Sidney Lanier gives 
answer in "The Crystal." Having shown that in 
all men, all authors, all artists, there is something 
for him to forgive, some flaw in the crystal, "some 
little mold that marks you brother, and your kin- 
ship seals to man," he exclaims: 

"But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time, 
But Thee, O poet's Poet, Wisdom's tongue, 
But Thee, O man's best Man, O Love's best Love, 
O perfect Life in perfect labor writ, 
O what amiss may I forgive in Thee, 
Jesus, good Paragon, Thou crystal Christ?" 

The Vacant Pedestal at Last Occupied. 

"We would see Jesus," said the Greeks in Jeru- 
salem. These Greeks were "men of cosmopolitan 
spirit" whose religion was beauty worship. These 
heirs of the treasures of art came to the apostles, 
custodians of the purest religious ideals, requesting 
a sight of Jesus. Whatever may have been the im- 



Christ the Norm of Beauty 29 

mediate success of their quest their petition was 
granted in fuller measure to their race when, twenty- 
two years afterward, Paul on Mars Hill proclaimed 
Christ to the Athenians. The import of this event 
appears when it is remembered that the place was 
Athens, the intellectual metropolis of the ancient 
world — the "mother of arts and eloquence." "Per- 
haps on no other area of similar extent on the sur- 
face of the world have so many objects of interest 
ever been collected as were to be seen of old on that 
Athenian plain. Wherever one might look, the 
finest productions of the painter's and the sculptor's 
art were challenging admiration and awakening de- 
light; and not infrequently some stirring historical 
association added its own peculiar heart-thrill to the 
pleasure felt by the spectator in the contemplation 
of the beautiful. Statues to its worthiest sons had 
been erected in all quarters of the city; paintings 
illustrating the most memorable victories in Athenian 
history were to be seen in many of the public porti- 
coes; and the finest architectural effects were pro- 
duced by the multitudinous temples which 
surrounded the beholder." In the midst of these 
accumulations of art and religious splendors, sur- 
rounded by the worshipers of beauty Paul began: 
"Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you 
pay more than usual attention to religion; for as 



30 The Gospel of Beauty 

I passed by and beheld the objects which you wor- 
ship, I found also an altar on which had been in- 
scribed, 'To the Unknown God' : whom therefore 
ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you." In 
the inscription on this altar Paul recognized in the 
heart of Athens a witness to the deep, unsatisfied 
yearning of humanity for a closer and clearer 
knowledge of the unseen power which men worship 
dimly and imperfectly, and now upon this unoccu- 
pied and hitherto unclaimed pedestal Paul places 
Jesus as upon a throne; from that hour the Greek 
gods, offspring of Greek religion wedded to Greek 
art, began to fall down before him as Dagon fell 
down before the ark of the covenant, and in that day 
commenced the emancipation of art, to serve, with 
a freedom never known before, the true religion. 
The liberation was a slow process indeed ; but art had 
at last heard the call of her Master and would never 
again be content to wear the shackles of the sensu- 
ous. From that time until the present there has been 
a new blessedness, a new power, a new ideal for 
every one who will 

"Gaze one moment on the Face, whose beauty 

Wakes the world's great hymn; 
Feel it one unutterable moment 

Bent in love o'er him; 
In that look feel heaven, earth, men and angels 

Nearer grow through him." 



Christ the Norm of Beauty 31 

The Rescue of Art Begun. 

In illustration of the early struggle of art to free 
itself from the thralldom of paganism to enter the 
service of Christianity, I offer a comparison of 
almost contemporaneous paintings which I have 
examined in the exhumed city of Pompeii and in the 
St. Callistus Catacombs. Those in Pompeii are 
still to be seen upon the interior walls of some of 
the palaces and are of exquisite beauty and color, 
perfect marvels of skill and design, but so utterly 
revolting in their abject baseness that one is shocked 
at the vile ends to which art has been degraded. 
On the other hand the crude symbolic drawings 
observable over the tombs in the catacombs continue 
to tell of the deathless faith, holy lives and pure 
characters of those there buried. "Pompeii shows 
the worship of form, the adoration of matter, the 
marvels of grace and physical perfection. The Cat- 
acombs set forth the life of the soul, love, modesty 
and power." In these underground symbols and 
paintings art first tried with halting hand to set forth 
in picture and type the deep, eternal feelings of the 
soul. 

Another instance of the process in the redemption 
of art is found in the use of pagan symbolism to 
illustrate Christian conceptions. The early Chris- 



32 The Gospel of Beauty 

tians, who had themselves been pagans, with large 
hearts and unprejudiced wisdom, regarded the no- 
blest mythic conceptions as foregleams of Christian- 
ity and "unconscious prophecies of heathendom," as 
Archbishop Trent calls them; and so they did not 
hesitate to seize and adopt, or more correctly, to 
Christianize, them for the purposes of instruction 
and decoration, though even in the use of these 
symbols there was from the very first a distinct 
and unfathomable gulf between pagan and Christian 
art ; the result was that various mythological figures 
were regarded as types of Christ. Of these types of 
Christ, borrowed from pagan antiquity, the favorite 
was Orpheus taming the wild beasts with his lyre. 
Two specimens are found in the Catacombs of St. 
Callistus, and Boldetti even imagined that they 
might be as old as the days of Nero. Orpheus is 
represented in the bloom of youth, supporting on 
his knee his five-stringed harp. Around him lion, 
and wolf, and leopard, and horse, and sheep, and 
serpent, and tortoise are listening: and on the 
branches of the tree are seated peacocks and other 
birds. That gracious and beautiful figure subdu- 
ing the savage passions of the animals, and drawing 
all to listen to him with sweet attractiveness, 
appeared to the ancient Christians a most fit embelm 
of Christ drawing order out of confusion and gentle- 



Christ the Norm of Beauty 33 

ness out of ferocity. It recalled also the Messianic 
prophecies about the day when "the wolf also shall 
dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down 
with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and 
the fatling together; and a little child shall lead 
them." 

Christ Not an Artist, but Beauty Incarnate. 

The question arises, what is there in the earthly 
life of Christ, or in the essence of Christianity to 
explain the influence exerted by Christianity on art. 
How is it that so large a place has been accorded to 
Christ in every department of art, that Christian art, 
as readily acceded, is the climax and glory of all art, 
adopting as its own the words of the poet. 

"Yea, through life, death, through sorrow and through 
sinning, 
Christ shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed; 
Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning: 
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ." 

How does Christ stand related to the question of 
beauty and in consequence to art, which is the effort 
to discover and release beauty? Jesus gave no 
special attention to art as such nor did he lay empha- 
sis on the beautiful purely for beauty's sake. So 
true is this that it must be admitted that any attempt 
to find the artist in the New Testament yields but 
poor results. Many have wondered that Christ did 



34 The Gospel of Beauty 

not say more about the beautiful than he did, that he 
gave but little attention to the lovely objects in the 
world of beauty. With great force the question is 
asked why there is such apparent neglect in the New 
Testament of the beautiful features of the land where 
it was produced. The sky is as gorgeous over Jeru- 
salem and the plain of Galilee as it ever was over any 
other land, but it is not reflected in the New Testa- 
ment. The desert charm, the calm of olive-grove 
and palm-oasis, the tinkle of the spring, the rolling 
of the clouds from Lebanon, the glint of eastern 
light on lovely hills and fields, the gorgeous luxuri- 
ance of tropical flowers, the marvelous sunsets be- 
yond the Mediterranean; all this stretched in pan- 
oramic splendor in every direction, while on every 
side lay the subjects which afterward inspired the 
Tintorets, the Miltons, the Handels, and the un- 
named cathedral-builders, and later held for years 
the gifted and devout painter from Paris, J. James 
Tissot, to the matchless task of producing his "Life 
of Jesus Christ" ; but these fascinating objects and 
scenes received only slight attention at the hands of 
the serious writers of the Gospel-story. And 
there was the temple with its sacred associations, far- 
famed beauty and marvelous stones, with its Nicanor 
gate covered with gold and silver, the golden gate 
on the east side, and the still more beautiful gate on 



Christ the Norm of Beauty 35 

the south, which invited the worshiper to exalted 
feelings when he came to attend the feasts in Jeru- 
salem ; yet when his admiring disciples came to show 
him the massive beauty and exquisite finish of this 
venerated building, Jesus shared not in their en- 
thusiasm but replied, "There shall not be left here 
one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown 
down." 

There are, to be sure, in the gospel narrative some 
casual references to grapes, birds, sunsets, sheep, 
trees, grass, leaves, lilies, pearls, but everywhere the 
didactic element predominates; and all the objects 
carry a religious message. They do not speak for 
themselves, but for some other idea. How may we 
explain this failure to take account of the beautiful? 
Had Christ no eye for the beautiful? Was he in- 
sensible to its charm? 

The answer is not hard to find. Christ did not 
come to pose as the beautiful. This was the ideal 
set apart for heathen deities. Said Petronius of the 
Roman gods, "Our gods are beautiful, but we do not 
love them." Nor was his mission to talk about 
beauty, to discourse on fragrance, form or color, or 
to execute beautiful designs. Christ was not an 
artist as others were accounted artists. Of Greece's 
greatest sculptor Socrates remarked, "Phidias is 
skilled in beauty," and so he was, or he never could 



36 The Gospel of Beauty 

have decorated the Parthenon or executed the colos- 
sal gold and ivory statue of Zeus at Elys. But 
Christ came not to rival Phidias. He came not to 
execute physical beauty nor to create new designs 
and patterns for painters, poets and sculptors. He 
was himself beauty incarnate, needing not to call 
attention to his own excellence. It was his to live 
beauty. He came not to interpret forms or to make 
an addition to the effete traditions of the world. He 
came to impart life and beauty to others. The fields, 
the birds, the flowers, the sun-sets and all were his, 
the work of his hands. He had no need to speak 
of them. They spoke of him. 

"One spirit— His 
Who wore the plaited thorns with bleeding brows — 
Rules universal nature. Not a flower 
But shows some touch in freckle, streak or stain, 
Of His unrivalled pencil. He inspires 
Their balmy odors and imparts their hues, 
And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes, 
In grains as countless as the seaside sands, 
The forms with which He sprinkles all the earth; 
Happy who walks with Him!" 

This conception of Christ's lordship over the 
world of beauty has been otherwise set forth in these 
charming lines : 

"I like to think that spring- before she started 
Upon her lovely quest 
Knelt low at Christ's own foot-stool and departed 
With her sweet mission blessed 



Christ the Norm of Beauty 37 

"I like to think the daffodilian splendor 
That decks her gentle grace 
Was guarded as she knelt in glad surrender 
Before His shining face. 

"I like to think her gown, in fairest order, 
With bud and bloom made bright 
Brushed something of its fragrance from the border 
Of His pure robes of white." 

Christ's principle concern was a beauty of holiness 
rather than the beauty of nature. The latter he used 
only as illustrative of the former. He was above 
art. He worked not on canvas, but on hearts. He 
gave attention to the inside, rather than to the out- 
side of things. And so he shed a light upon all 
things revealing a richness of beauty in the most 
commonplace objects, and showing that the world is 
only the hem of the exquisite garment of God, the 
token of that higher world which the eye cannot 
see, the ear cannot hear, the mind cannot under- 
stand, but which the heart can feel. 

Two words for beautiful occur in the New Testa- 
ment: horaios and kolos. The former means out- 
ward, physical beauty; pleasing, sensuous form. It 
occurs three times — only once in the gospels — Mat- 
thew 23 : 27 — "whited sepulchres which outwardly 
appear beautiful (horaioi) but inwardly are full of 
dead men's bones" — without, quite an attractive 



38 The Gospel of Beauty 

feature in the landscape; within, only death- fraught 
loathsomeness. In the use of this word in such con- 
nection a sharp blow seems to be dealt against all 
counterfeit beauty and false art. The other word, 
kalos, is used 103 times. Applied to things it means 
beautiful, precious, excellent in nature, well adapted 
to its ends. Joined to the names of persons it sig- 
nifies purity of life, morally beautiful, praiseworthy, 
noble, honorable, competent; its essence subsisting 
not in the external form, but in the internal motive 
or purpose. It is one of the richest, most refined 
words in the Greek language — a fitting vessel into 
which to put the fine content of Christ's concept of 
beauty, goodness and worth. 

This word, but never the former, is joined to 
Christ's name as indicating the highest moral beauty. 
He applies the word to himself when he says, "I am 
the good (kalos) shepherd." In the appellation 
"The Beautiful Shepherd" it is inferred that this sub- 
lime type of beauty indicated by the word is per- 
fectly realized in him. The context shows in what 
this beauty consists. It reveals to us Christ's rela- 
tive place in the whole world of.beauty and lays 
before us the secret of his influence in the world 
of art. A study of this word will reveal the univer- 
sal and permanent qualities of moral beauty. 



Christ the Norm of Beauty 39 

The Beauty of Sacrifice. 

The first trait of character in "The Beautiful 
Shepherd" is indicated in the statement : "I am the 
beautiful shepherd: the beautiful shepherd layeth 
down his life for the sheep." This first quality in 
the essence of moral beauty may be named as love 
carried to the point of complete self-giving to others. 
This was something hitherto unheard of in the 
world, destined to unshackle religion and art from 
the bonds of selfishness and put a new interpretation 
on suffering which had been the puzzle and paralysis 
of art, blocking its progress and mocking all its ques- 
tions. Truly enough art had undertaken to deal 
with suffering, but with the result of painful defeat. 
Pagan religion and art had alike failed to solve the 
problem of suffering. To illustrate and enforce 
this statement it is necessary to cite only two or three 
instances of fruitless endeavor : 

There is CEdipus Tyrannus, the great art tragedy 
of Sophocles. We shudder yet to read it. CEdi- 
pus, the unhappy victim of an ill-boding omen, is 
subjected to horrible sufferings for which no ex- 
planation is given except an inexorable fate. Op- 
posed by his father he becomes a friendless 
wanderer. Finally he slays his father unawares and 
marries his mother, who later hangs herself. Be- 



40 The Gospel of Beauty 

tween his sons there is a deadly hatred and they 
slay each other. At last as the hidden horrors and 
blunders of his life are revealed to him, he puts out 
his own eyes. He wanders blind, guided by his 
miserable daughter, and finally dies in a forest. 
This fearsome snarl is pagan art's interpretation of 
Greek religion in its attitude toward human suffer- 
ing, and this was the orthodox and universally ac- 
cepted explanation. With it agrees the awful story 
of Prometheus, who, under the wrath of Zeus, is 
chained to a rock where a vulture daily preys upon 
his vitals until he is relieved from this deathless 
death by Hercules whose prowess enables him to out- 
wit the wrath of Zeus. Nor is there less of dread 
and doom in the myth of Laocoon and his sons who, 
victimized by the anger of the beautiful goddess 
Athene, are, while performing their religious rites, 
captured and crushed to death within the hopeless 
coils of two huge serpents. Whoever looks upon 
this agonizing group done into marble by Agesander 
and his comrades and now existing in the Vatican, or 
has read Lessing's masterly criticism of it, cannot 
but recoil at the heartless art and comfortless re- 
ligious conceptions of the ancients. 

Fleeing from these harrowing conceptions we 
read with new appreciation the saying of Jesus, "I 
am the beautiful shepherd; the beautiful shepherd 



Christ the Norm of Beauty 41 

layeth down his life for the sheep." Here a new- 
light is falling on this heretofore inexplicable prob- 
lem of suffering. The angry deity is not hunting 
down his victims, pursuing them with fate, crushing 
them with serpents and tearing them with hungry 
vultures, but the divine and beautiful one is laying 
down his life for those whom he loves. There is a 
reversal of all precedent and law. The sheep no 
longer dies for the shepherd, but the shepherd dies 
for the sheep. This Christian doctrine of vicarious 
suffering, as taught and exemplified by Christ, has 
no equal in the world's history as an illuminative and 
constructive force. Everywhere its light and power 
are felt and not least in the world of art, not only 
in painting and statuary, but in poetry and music, 
while this doctrine of the vicarious suffering of love 
has been crystallized in Christian architecture — the 
cruciform structure of the cathedral representing 
Christ upon the cross. 

The Beauty of Sympathy, 

Once more Jesus says, "I am the beautiful shep- 
herd; and I know mine own and mine own know 
me." The epithet beautiful is explained here by a 
new point, that of relation, full of tenderness, w r hich 
unites Jesus and his people — the fellowship of the 
divine with the human and of the human with the di- 



42 The Gospel of Beauty 

vine. Here is fellowship with the divine — fellowship 
intimate and genuine. While this supplies the at- 
mosphere of Christian living, it is also a supreme 
essential in the unhampering of art. With great 
acumen and insight one has said, "The poet must 
become unconscious of himself in the life of nature; 
he must sing with the brook, bloom with the flower, 
sweep with the wind, glitter with the sunbeam, 
sparkle with the fountain, soar with the lark at 
dawn." What is true of the poet is likewise true 
with reference to other artists; but how better than 
through fellowship with Christ and intimate knowl- 
edge of him can this communion with God and the 
consequent understanding of nature be attained? 
No poet has lived who traced nature's ways and sang 
her song more truly than Alfred Tennyson. The 
secret of his discernment was in his consciousness of 
God and his joyful fellowship with him. "My 
most passionate desire is to have a clearer and fuller 
vision of God. I can sympathize with God in my 
poor little way." There we have it. At last he let 
his secret out. And here too we discover what is 
lacking in some of the mightiest pieces of some of 
the great unchristian artists. It is this want of sym- 
pathy with God. 

In this sympathy with God subsists the very 
essence of moral beauty ; and moral beauty is the soul 



Christ the Norm of Beauty 43 

of true art. Says Victor Cousin ; "God is the source 
of all beauty, of all truth, of all religion, of all 
morality. The most exalted object, therefore, of 
art is to reveal in its own manner the sentiment of 
the Infinite." And Sir Frederic Leighton, at one 
time President of the Royal Academy, while con- 
tending that art is wholly independent of morality, 
yet declares that "there is, nevertheless, no error 
deeper or more deadly than to deny that the moral 
complexion, the ethos, of the artist, does, in truth, 
tinge every work of his hand, and fashion — in si- 
lence, but with the certainty of fate — the course and 
current of his whole career. Believe me, whatever 
of dignity, whatever of strength we have within us, 
will display and make strong the labors of our hands ; 
whatever littleness degrades our spirit will lessen 
them and drag them down ; whatever noble fire is in 
our hearts will burn also in our work; whatever 
purity is ours will chasten and exalt it. For as we 
are, so our work is ; and what we sow in our lives, 
that beyond a doubt we shall reap, for good or for 
ill, in the strengthening or defacing of whatever 
gifts have fallen to our lot." And Mr. Ruskin says : 
'What must the artist have on his canvas? That 
which he has in his imagination; that which he has 
in his life." The truth of this finds demonstration 
in the life, character and work of Fra Angelica, than 



44 The Gospel of Beauty 

whom perhaps the world never produced a saintlier, 
sweeter soul — a soul more childlike in its purity. 
The inspiration of love, of innocence, of purity, of 
faith, of divine communion, breathes from every 
color and every face of his soft, silent pictures. 

"The simple monk worked out his own ideal — 
And were there ever forms more heavenly fair ? 
Nay, from the life the ineffable angels there 
Seemed limned and colored by their servant leal. 
What was his charm ? Whence the inflowing grace ? 
The beauty of holiness ! His child-soul dreamed 
Where psalm and censer filled the holy place, 
Till to take shape the mist the music seemed." 

Beauty Unbound. 

From these two points — suffering and fellowship 
— by which Jesus characterizes himself as "The 
Beautiful Shepherd," springs the third. "And 
other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; them 
also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice ; and 
there shall be one fold, and one shepherd." While 
this scripture connotes the prophetic purpose of 
breaking down the walls separating between the dif- 
ferent races and nations and looks for its accom- 
plishment to the missionary enterprise in the 
heathen world, there may be discovered in it also 
that cosmopolitanism which recognizes the need of 
all men and finds an arena for its benevolent applica- 
tion to every sphere of human activity. This 



Christ the Norm of Beauty 45 

declaration of loving regard for the outsider marked 
no new departure in his mission. On several occa- 
sions during his ministry we find him coming in 
touch with representatives of the world beyond the 
boundaries of the chosen people. The Magi kneel- 
ing at his manger-cradle, the Syrophoenician woman 
who persisted so bravely against apparent refusal, 
the Roman soldiers whose appreciation of his 
authority led them to make such striking confessions 
of faith, and Pilate his human judge ; and nearer to 
Jewish life, the Samaritan woman at the well of 
Sychar, and the Samaritan leper with his thanksgiv- 
ing for healing — in his contact with all of these, 
Christ seems prophetically to touch that great world 
of men and women of many races into which he 
passed through the gate of his passion as universal 
King and Saviour. 

This cosmopolitanism grounded in the liberty of 
love is one of the qualities which marked him out as 
"The Beautiful Shepherd." This loving cosmopol- 
itanism which leaped over walls and obliterated 
boundary lines had not touched art, even as it had 
not touched religion. Art as well as religion had 
been cramped behind tribal prejudices and racial 
ideals. This quality of moral beauty, resident in 
Christ and Christianity, has been slowest to make 
itself felt in any permanent way in the artistic world, 



46 The Gospel of Beauty 

as may be seen in the paintings of Christ which al- 
most invariably reveal the painters' tastes and 
prejudices, since each one has made him the ideal 
man of his own particular race and time. A satis- 
fying picture of Christ has never yet been painted. 
Here is a field yet to be occupied in which we may 
expect the greatest triumph of art to be achieved. 
We may hope for this when Christianity shall have 
received that complete interpretation which will be 
possible only as all nations accept him and tell out 
of their varying racial experiences what Christ has 
become to them and done for them. The world is 
still waiting for a worthy portrayal of the cosmopol- 
itan Christ, both in religion and in art. 

But something has been accomplished in this field. 
Already the fruitage of this cosmopolitan influence 
has appeared, but often in unexpected places, for ex- 
ample in the lustre thrown by art upon the common- 
places of life. Artists, no longer content themselves 
with sculpturing a Venus di Milo or Apollo Belvi- 
dere, with painting pictures of Athene or singing 
of the monstrous doings of the gods on Olympus, 
but are devoting their gifts to things more human 
and real. And these changes have been marked and 
radical in recent times even among professed Chris- 
tian artists. There are no more Titians painting 
the "Assumption of the Virgin" with its multitudi- 



Christ the Norm of Beauty 47 

nous cherub heads crowding around. Nor is there a 
Fra Angelico in his little cell painting angels "with 
the flames on their white foreheads." Christian art, 
like the Christ, has come down on the plain where 
the people live and toil. Perhaps Murillo's paint- 
ing, "The Angels in the Kitchen," prepared the way 
for some who succeeded and surpassed him in glori- 
fying life's commonplace with the glory of religion. 
It is seen in Millet's "Angelus" where appear not 
hooded monks nor aureoled angels, but peasants at 
prayer in the field, with the distant church spire 
silhouetted against the sky as the background. How 
human, how heavenly, how religiously cosmopolitan ! 
But possibly the most perfect achievement of paint- 
ing under the influence of Christianity is the 
"Shadow of Death" by Holman Hunt, who under- 
took the task only after he had spent four years at 
Nazareth and Bethlehem making accurate studies 
for the great picture. This painting I will not pre- 
sume to describe myself when I can enrich my nar- 
rative with the splendid description given by Canon 
Farrar : "It is one of the very few pictures in 
which art has tried to answer the question, Is not 
this the Carpenter? So far as I know, there was 
not one ancient or medieval picture which repre- 
sented Jesus as a young man exercising in the village 
of Nazareth that humble trade by which he glorified 



48 The Gospel of Beauty 

all labor. Mr. Hunt alone has yielded to the impulse 
of his own strong and simple faith, by painting 'the 
Lord of Time and All the worlds,' earning his daily 
bread as a Galilean artisan. He has represented 
Jesus in His humanity, accepting the common lot of 
the vast majority of the human race. He wears 
no nimbus or aureole, but is weary at eventide after 
long hours of manual toil. Leaving the saw in its 
plank, he uplifts his arm to utter the Shemah, the 
evening prayer. His eyes are turned heavenwards, 
his lips are opened in supplication. The Virgin is 
kneeling at his right. Contrasting the humble real- 
ities of the present with the splendid omens of the 
past, she is fondly opening the gleaming pearly 
coffer which contains the gifts of the Magi, — a 
golden crown and bowls, and an incense-burner of 
green enamel. But suddenly glancing up she has 
caught sight of a shadow on the wall, and though her 
back is turned to the spectator, the sudden arrest of 
attention expressed by her attitude shows her awe- 
stricken alarm. For what she sees is the Shadow 
of Death, and the shadow of Death by Crucifixion. 
On the wall behind Jesus, the rack and tools are so 
arranged as to give the semblance of a cross, and on 
this cross is shown his shadow as he stands with 
his arms outstretched. In this picture, then, we 
have an epitome of the Life of Jesus. The gifts of 



Christ the Norm of Beauty 49 

the Magi recall his infancy; the carpenter's shop, 
his youth and manhood; the shadow, his awful 
sacrifice. The clouds of Golgotha throw their dark- 
ness and their sunset-crimson on the golden mists of 
Bethlehem and the holy innocence of Nazareth." 

Out of my own appreciation of this great picture 
I have written the following lines which I have 
called : 

THE TOILER'S TRIUMPH 

Carpenter of Galilee! 
Builder from Eternity! 
Lo ! He works in narrow sphere — 
Shop at Nazareth bare and drear — 
Making tables for the feast, 
Restful yokes for burdened beast, 
Patching roofs and mending plows, 
Earning bread, as toil allows. 

Working Man in Galilee ! 
Advocate of Equity! 
Praying in the door he stands, 
Stretching out his aching hands; 
Bright his brow, but on the wall 
Pends a shadow like a pall, 
Sight of which is as a dart 
Piercing through his mother's heart. 

Man of Grief from Galilee! 
Victim of dark Treachery; 
Friends forsake thee to thy foes, 
Gloom enshrouds thee with its woes; 
Carpentry thou didst adorn, 
But it renders thee forlorn, 
Shaping that dread instrument 
Whereon thou to death wast sent. 



$o The Gospel of Beauty 

Comrade out of Galilee! 
Champion of Democracy! 
Wielding hammer, driving saw, 
Plying tasks without a flaw ; 
Squaring life with love and truth, 
Adding grace to age and youth, 
Fresh attractions thou dost bring, 
Harmonizing everything. 

Brother Man from Galilee ! 
Brother of Humanity! 
With a love that never fails, 
Stronger than all iron nails, 
Thou art building brotherhood, 
Filling all the world with good, 
Raising on the sunny slopes 
Palaces of gleaming hopes. 

Great White Christ of Galilee! 

For the Temple yet to be 

Sure foundations thou didst lay 

On creation's primal day. 

Thou wilt yet its dome encrown 

With thy glory and renown. 

While all creatures thee shall praise, 

On and on, through endless days. 

As in every other direction in which he turned to 
bless, Christ's advent was blocked by opposition, so 
his entrance into the arena of art to claim his own 
was met by a cold reserve. Early Christianity- 
looked on art with no friendly eye, but gradually 
his power and right, even in this field, were so com- 
pletely acknowledged that in the middle of the eighth 
century there was a general acquiescence on the part 
of Christianity to the argument put forth by John 
of Damascus; "Since he who, being in the form of 



Christ the Norm of Beauty 51 

God, is, by the excellence of his nature exempt from 
quantity, quality, and magnitude, yet took upon him 
the form of a servant, and put on the fashion of a 
body, contracting himself to quantity and quality; 
therefore represent him in pictures, and set him 
forth to be gazed on openly, who willed to be gazed 
upon. Paint his humiliation, his nativity, his 
baptism, his transfiguration, his agonies which ran- 
somed us, the miracles which, though wrought by 
his fleshly ministry, proved his divine power and 
nature, his sepulture, his resurrection, his ascen- 
sion, — paint all these things in colors as well as in 
speech, in pictures as well as in books." 

This view gradually came to be a sort of mani- 
festo of Christian art so that now Christ's place of 
supremacy in art is acknowledged by all. His place 
in the world of beauty is illustrated by Ruskin's fine 
criticism of Tintoret's "Adoration" ; "The whole 
picture is nothing but a large star, of which Christ is 
the center; all the figures, even the timbers of the 
roof, radiate from the small bright figure on which 
the countenance of the flying angels are bent, the star 
itself, gleaming through the timbers above, being 
quite subordinate." So, indeed, Christ is the center 
and life of the vast star of the universe wherein is 
set the beauty of God which art is ever seeking to 
discover and express. 



Ill 

TRANSFIGURATIONS 

Beauty of form surpasses the beauty of color; 
beauty of movement excels the beauty of form, as 
for example, a moving train of cars, a ship under 
full sail, a handsome horse running, a trained athlete 
in action. The very highest beauty of all is the 
beauty of moral movement — the exquisite "grace" 
of a soul acting under a worthy motive. The high- 
est motive to actuate souls to character-building 
deeds of loveliness and unselfishness comes from 
Christ. 

The Higher Laws of Beauty. 

Christ comes to regenerate, to reinterpret, to re- 
energize, to re-direct. Where he is accorded suffi- 
cient response, he imbues the soul with a new ideal, a 
new passion, and a new aspiration which are to work 
a transformation by bringing the personality up to 
its higher laws of development. To illustrate this 
thought I quote Thomas Tiplady in "The Cross at 
the Front" : "A few days before Christmas I was 
walking down a communication-trench just as a 

52 



Transfigurations 53 

heavy bombardment was ceasing. It was near four 
o'clock and the sun, a deep red, was almost touching 
the horizon. A German shell burst some little dis- 
tance away, high in the air, and formed a black, ugly 
cloud. Slowly the rays of the sinking sun penetrated 
the cloud of smoke and turned it to a faint pink. As 
the pink deepened to rose the cloud expanded under 
the influence of the soft wind and within a few mo- 
ments was transformed into a thing of beauty. It 
hung unpoised in mid-air, like a rose unfolding its 
fragrant petals, over the entrenched army. The 
black cloud was of man's making and revealed his 
hatred and spite; but its transformation into a thing 
of beauty and peace was of God's doing and revealed 
his love and good-will as truly as did the rainbow 
to Noah. God's glorious sun, as it set in blood, 
turned man's cloud of war into heaven's rose of 
peace." We are all familiar with Ruskin's story 
of how the mud of a beaten foot-path on a rainy day 
may be changed into beauty; by submitting to the 
higher laws of their nature and yielding to the trans- 
forming processes the clay becomes a sapphire, the 
sand an opal, the soot a diamond, and the water a 
star of snow. Christ does not stop at reclaiming and 
redeeming men but goes on to assimilate them to 
himself and with them to lengthen his program of 
transformation and beauty. 



54 The Gospel of Beauty 

Under Appointment to Be with the Master. 

"And he ordained twelve, that they might be with 
him, and that he might send them forth to preach, 
and to have authority to cast out demons." The 
purposes of the ordination were three-fold: that 
they might be with him; that he might send them 
forth to preach ; and that they might have and exer- 
cise power. The first was the most important and 
conditioned the other two, since they would be able 
to preach and to exercise power only as they had 
come within the circle of his comradeship. To illus- 
trate how Christ's mastering beautifying power 
spreads over responsive souls so that they come into 
their highest self-realization and at the same time 
become interpreters of the spirit that works in them, 
I cite the cases of three men, two of whom belonged 
to the number of original apostles, the other, while 
"as one born out of due time," he did not associate 
with Christ personally, "was not a whit behind the 
very chiefest apostles." In his own way let each of 
these tell how, to what extent, and to what end, 
Christ won the ascendency in his life. Then let us 
take a glance at the picturesque report which each 
one gives of the Christ, whom he has made Master 
in his life. 



i 



Transfigurations 55 

A Great Soul in Flower, 

First let tis take this vivid section out of the life 
history of Paul. "But when it was the good pleasure 
of God, who separated me, even from my mother's 
womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal 
his Son in me, that I might preach him among the 
Gentiles ; straightway I conferred not with flesh and 
blood." Notice how far back he goes in tracing 
the springs of his being, before leading up to the 
words, "to reveal his Son in me/' in which are 
crowded volumes of meaning and beauty. The 
word "reveal" (apokalupsai) means to open the 
calyx as of a flowering bud so as to disclose the 
petals within. The calyx leaves, or sepals, of a 
rose, on opening, turn back around the stem, and are 
soon completely hidden by the unfolding petals. 
The disappearing calyx gives place to the full-blown 
flower, as the child-blossom emerges from its swad- 
dling clothes. Paul's life and career were but the 
outer foliage within whose folds Christ was to be 
formed. As to envelope and then reveal the petals 
is the end for which the calyxes exist, so the purpose 
of Paul's existence was that in him Christ might 
be revealed. To what end is the revelation? Let 
him answer : "That I might preach him among the 
Gentiles/' or nations. To reveal Christ was to 



56 The Gospel of Beauty 

preach and proclaim Christ, to so report or interpret 
him, without deviation, that in the process nothing 
shall be subtracted from his beauty or charm. As 
the calyx holds the embryonic rose, so Paul enveloped 
Christ within himself, and with him to preach was to 
allow Christ to blossom out from the self -yielding 
life of a preacher. To preach is to "uncalyx" Christ. 

The Face of Jesus Christ. 

Out of such a Christed subjectivity we are not sur- 
prised that there emanates that masterpiece contained 
in I Corinthians 13, which may be thought of as the 
objective representation of that Personality whom 
Paul had made king over his inner life : 

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of 
angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, 
or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of 
prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowl- 
edge ; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove 
mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though 
I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give 
my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me 
nothing. 

"Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; 
love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave 
itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily pro- 
voked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but 
rejoiceth in truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, 
hopeth all things, endureth all things. 

"Love never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, 
they shall fail ; whether there be tongues, they shall cease ; 
whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For 
we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when 
that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part 



Transfigurations 57 

shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a 
child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but 
when I became a man, I put away childish things. 
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to 
face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know even 
as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, love, 
these three ; but the greatest of these is love." 

"Such was the portrait an apostle drew, 
The bright Original was one he knew; 
Heaven held his hand, the likeness must be true." 

The Day Star in the Heart, 

Growing personal and reminiscent in one of the 
most charming passages from his vigorous pen 
(II Peter 1 : 12-19) Peter recalls two experiences 
which contributed largely to the enrichment and 
flavoring of his soul. He thinks of that early morn- 
ing scene on the Galilee shore when after thrice re- 
avowing his loyalty and love in response to his Mas- 
ter's questioning, the Lord Jesus Christ signified 
unto him by what manner of death he should glorify 
God. He remembered too when he was with his 
Master in the holy mount, and heard such a voice 
borne to him by the Majestic Glory, "This is my 
beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." Having 
recalled these two notable events he goes on to talk 
about the word of prophecy "as a lamp shining in a 
dark place, until the day dawn, and the Day Star 
arise in your hearts." Noble, chastened soul! Is 
he not writing out of his own experience? Had he 



58 The Gospel of Beauty 

not followed the "lamp shining in a dark place" — a 
dirty, dingy, darkened place over-run as with wild, 
scraggy wood? Had he not often waited for the 
day dawn, and had not the Day Star (Phoosphoros) 
already arisen in his own heart ? What, though they 
failed to see the Star mounting the sky, heralding 
the day; what though the horizon be glowering, if 
only the Day Star arise in their hearts ! They may 
well lift up their heads because now their redemption 
draweth nigh. 

Out of such an experience of sweet reminiscence 
and exulting hope, what sort of representation may 
we rightfully look for ? In the gallery of this man's 
soul what picture of Christ has been enshrined ? He 
himself will draw aside the curtain and permit us to 
look : 

"Because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an 
example, that ye should follow his steps ; who did no sin, 
neither was guile found in his mouth; who, when he was 
reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, threatened 
not; but committed himself to him that judgeth right- 
eously; who his own self bare our sins in his body upon 
the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto 
righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye 
were going astray like sheep; but are now returned unto 
the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls." 

Examination Ending in Exultation. 

Now hear John, the beloved, summarize the story 
of his experience of Christ and hear his positive 



Transfigurations 59 

declaration of it to others. "That which was from 
the beginning, that which we have seen with our 
eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, 
concerning the Word of life (and the life was man- 
ifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and de- 
clare unto you the life, the eternal life, which was 
with the Father, and was manifested unto us) : that 
which we have seen and heard declare we unto you 
also, that ye also may have fellowship with us." 
The apostle struggles for expression. He starts and 
breaks off and starts again. He heaps assurance 
upon assurance with elaborate emphasis. In the 
succession of verbs which he uses there is an unmis- 
takable gradation which reaches the climax in the 
declaration "we have seen and heard." He says, 
"We have seen with our eyes," "we beheld," "our 
hands handled," "we have seen and bear witness." 
A great spectacle has broken on his astonished vision, 
a segment of the life of him whose years are eternal 
has come within the range of his vision. He does 
not grasp all the wonder of it, he only touches its 
edge. "Our hands handled" (epseelapheesan), the 
word is used of the fumbling of a blind man, as 
Isaac felt the hands of Jacob (Gen. 17: 12). Ob- 
serve that there is a difference between the words 
"see" and "behold." The word "see" (horao) im- 
plies the idea of knowledge acquired by investiga- 



60 The Gospel of Beauty 

tion, while the word ' 'behold' ' (theaomai) means to 
gaze upon with satisfaction, to contemplate with a 
sense of restfulness. Examination then results in 
exultation. Honest investigation ends in adoration. 
Out of his effort to find out who Christ is arises fel- 
lowship with Christ. He did not learn all about 
Christ but he learned enough to say "our fellow- 
ship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus 
Christ." 

Girt with a Golden Girdle. 

Later on in John's life this fellowship became so 
real that in the loneliness of exile Christ came to him, 
and he has given us a matchless portrayal of his 
Lord as he saw him. 

"And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. 
And having turned I saw seven golden candlesticks; and 
in the midst of the candlesticks one like unto a son of 
man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt 
about at the breasts with a golden girdle. And his head 
and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; 
and his eyes were as a flame of fire ; and his feet like unto 
burnished brass, as if it had been refined in a furnace; and 
his voice as the voice of many waters. And he had in 
his right hand seven stars; and out of his mouth pro- 
ceeded a sharp two-edged sword; and his countenance 
was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw 
him, I fell at his feet as one dead. And he laid his right 
hand upon me, saying, Fear not; I am the first and the 
last, and the Living one; and I was dead, and behold, I 
am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and 
of Hades." 



Transfigurations 61 

Thus Christ begins and carries on his conquest by 
entering the inner regions of men's lives, calling them 
up to the highest measure of noble experience and 
making them interpreters of the life which he is 
living in them and through them. Do we not here 
find the beauty of moral movement, is not Christ's 
gospel the gospel of beauty? He does not stop at 
making conquest of men, he wants and wins their 
belongings, their mental furniture and soul's 
equipage. 

The Gospel at Its Source. 

The Christian enterprise began without any writ- 
ten books at all, except those of the Old Testament. 
"There was only the living word — the gospel, but 
no Gospels." Instead of the letter was the spirit. 
The beginning, in fact, was Jesus himself. In the 
superscription of Mark's Gospel we are at once 
brought face to face with the personage of Christ 
without any introduction save a quotation from the 
prophecy of Isaiah. The gospel begins with him, 
so that it may be said that Christianity is a stream 
which has its source in Jesus. "He is the Christ, 
the Prince of Life, Lord of all, Judge of the living 
and the dead, at God's right hand, the Giver of the 
Spirit, the fulfiller of all the promises of God. He 
is not the first of Christians or the best of men, but 



62 The Gospel of Beauty 

something absolutely different from this. The 
apostles and their converts are not persons who share 
the faith of Jesus ; they are persons who have Jesus 
as the object of their faith, and who believe in God 
through him." The New Testament is a product 
of Christianity, not its basis nor its origin. It is a 
compilation of reports made by those who had en- 
tered into intimate and intelligent fellowship with 
Jesus. Already we have seen how Christ chose the 
men who were to become his interpreters. Let us 
now think of the language medium through which 
these interpretations were made, and here we will 
traverse a field whereon one of his richest conquests 
was achieved. 

A Fitting Vehicle Prepared. 

Here I make grateful and long overdue acknowl- 
edgment to Professor A. T. Robertson, for help 
received from his "Grammar of the Greek New 
Testament," a colossal contribution to Biblical liter- 
ature and a veritable treasury of learning. I have 
also gathered valuable aid from Hastings' Dictionary 
of the Bible. 

The literary supremacy of Athens had caused her 
dialect, the Attic, gradually to supplant the forms of 
language used by other families of the Greek race. 
The diffusion of Greek was much furthered through 



Transfigurations 63 

the conquest and colonization of the East by Alex- 
ander the Great, who had been taught by the mighty 
Aristotle, who himself studied in Athens and knew 
the Attic of the time. Alexander and his successors 
rapidly established Greek as the language of the 
whole vast empire over which they ruled, and it was 
this which gave the chief bond of union to the many 
old civilizations which had hitherto been isolated. 
In the process of diffusion the Attic dialect itself 
was modified by the speech and customs of the 
nations among which it extended until at length 
there spread a cosmopolitan type of Greek known 
as the Common Dialect. It was not merely a general 
Greek tongue among the Greek dialects, as had 
been true of the Attic and other dialects, but was 
indeed a world-speech. Having undergone the mod- 
ifications resulting inevitably from its use in widely 
separated localities and by intervening generations, 
it was an idiom which commanded the respect of the 
cultivated, yet in substance was the language of every 
day life. Not only was it the language of letters but it 
was also the language of commerce and of ordinary 
experience. In other words it was the language of 
spirit and life. So universal did it become that it 
spread over Asia, Egypt, Greece, Sicily and as far 
west as Marseilles and as far south as Cyrene. It 
came into such general use that the Roman Senate 



64 The Gospel of Beauty 

and imperial governors had their decrees written in 
the world-language and scattered over the empire. 
It is quite significant that this Greek speech bceomes 
one language instead of many dialects, at the very 
time that the Roman rule sweeps over the world. 
Spread by Alexander's army over the great East, it 
persisted after the division of his kingdom, and 
penetrated all parts of the Roman world, even Rome 
itself. To illustrate its universal use we need but 
recall that Paul, a Jew, wrote to the church in Rome 
in this same Greek language ,or world-speech. This 
cosmopolitan Greek was the language in which the 
Greek New Testament was written. Being the 
language of every day life it was thereby fitted for 
the dissemination of the gospel by preaching and 
writing wherever Greek was spoken, and furnished 
a vehicle by which the revelation of God through 
Jesus Christ was given to the world. 

How the Hellenic Spirit Was 
Seized and Transformed. 

One recalls here the words of the great Greek 
scholar Erasmus, who in the fifteenth century in 
his lectures at Cambridge University said, referring 
to the Gospels and Epistles and the necessity of 
their correct translation into English, "I wish that 
the husbandman may sing them at his plow, that the 



Transfigurations 65 

weaver may warble them at his shuttle, that the trav- 
eler may with their narration beguile the weariness 
of his way." We know what the Authorized Ver- 
sion of the Bible, in its stabilizing, purifying and 
enriching influence, has meant for the English 
language. In like manner the new gospel message 
glorified the Greek language, taking words from the 
street and making them bear a new content, linking 
heaven with earth in a new sense. With the intro- 
duction of Christianity an entirely new contribution 
was made to the thought and life of the human race. 
This Greek language is the vessel in which this fresh 
gift was expressed and conveyed. Professor Rob- 
ertson sums it up in one fine sentence when he says, 
"The New Testament language is real Greek, though 
with the Christian spirit supreme in it, because 
Christianity seized the Hellenic spirit and trans- 
formed it." That tells the whole story of the beau- 
tifying power of the gospel. What a stupendous 
achievement was wrought when "Christianity seized 
the Hellenic spirit and transformed it." It consti- 
tutes a literary phenomenon amounting almost to a 
miracle. 

How Language Links Earth with Heaven. 

In this transforming process Greek words were 
often given new meanings or rather the ancient 



66 The Gospel of Beauty 

meanings were elevated and refined. Certain words 
that had been as vessels of earth "unto dishonor'* 
were, by the precious contents poured into them, 
changed into vessels of gold "unto honor, sanctified, 
meet for the Master's use, prepared." Terms that 
had been used in deifying the Roman emperor were 
transfigured by being adopted as names of Christ. 
Other terms in common use throughout the Roman 
Empire were given a deeper and more spiritual sig- 
nificance, as for example, brother, Saviour, salva- 
tion, Son of God, Lord, minister, disciple, deacon, 
way, grace, peace, love, life, humility, and many 
others. A careful study of the Greek equivalent of 
such words will yield startling and illuminating re- 
sults. Examine for example the Greek word hodos 
in Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New 
Testament. Trace the various meanings recorded in 
the one and a half columns and note how the defi- 
nitions enlarge in scope, meaning, and beauty. The 
first meaning is given simply as "way"; the last is 
taken from the saying of Christ, "I am the way/' 
that is, the way "by which all who seek approach to 
God must enter into closest fellowship." Again, 
taking the word stauros, which, like an unsightly 
root planted in the soil, springs up into fragrant 
beauty. Liddell and Scott define the word as an 
"upright pale, or stake, — the cross as the Roman 



Transfigurations 67 

instrument of crucifixion." Thayer defines it as 
"the well-known instrument of most cruel and ig- 
nominious punishment, borrowed by the Greeks and 
Romans from the Phoenicians; to it were affixed 
among the Romans, down to the time of Constantine 
the Great, the guiltiest criminals, particularly the 
basest slaves, robbers, the authors and abetters of 
insurrections." He further defines it as "the cruci- 
fixion which Christ underwent," and again the "sav- 
ing power of his crucifixion," the latter definition 
echoing Paul's exultant words, "God forbid that I 
should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I 
unto the world." To-day instead of being thought 
of as the instrument of shame, the significance im- 
parted to it by the centuries is expressed in the lines 
of one of our noblest hymns — 

"In the cross of Christ I glory, 
Towering- o'er the wrecks of time ; 
All the light of sacred story, 
Gathers round its head sublime." 



IV 

THE PRINCIPLES OF BEAUTY 

The essentials of beauty are inherent in the gospel. 
Its principles were observed by Jesus in his teach- 
ings and are discoverable throughout the New Testa- 
ment. In the ancient days of art the ideals of 
beauty were well understood by the women of classic 
Greece. Out-door life and perfect health lent each 
maiden an arm and brow of marble and a cheek of 
purest rose. With instinctive grace the girl draped 
herself in one color, white, in a simple robe falling 
to the ground in one straight line, with one flower 
at the throat, a red rose. From this classic expres- 
sion of beauty in the Greek maiden's appearance, the 
principles of beauty may be enumerated as individu- 
ality, simplicity, naturalness, and freedom. 

The Beauty of Individuality. 

The calla-lily plant concentrates its life in one 
flower with its bar of gold standing up out of its 
bosom. A small painting in the window of an art 

shop showed a bit of country road and a patch of 

68 



The Principles of Beauty 69 

blue-bonnets. It attracted the attention of many 
passers-by who would never have detected the beauty 
had it not first been caught by the painter's eye and 
set within the narrow compass of the canvas and its 
frame — the frame which shut in the tiny scene and 
shut out the rest of the world. A drop of water 
under a powerful microscope reveals a world of 
wonder and beauty which would never have been 
guessed at if the drop had never been set apart 
under the magnifying glass. As the microscope 
unveils the unobserved beauty of objects that are 
near, so the telescope brings down within the range 
of vision the beauty that is far away. When the 
mighty lens is turned on Venus there are revelations 
of beauty which could never have been detected with 
the naked eye. The sculptor's chisel cuts into the 
block of marble until the angel hidden within is set 
free ; likewise under the lapidary's tools the diamond 
is released from the rock in which it was imbedded. 
Only by specializing are the clear-cut lines of beauty 
traced and its well-marked boundaries established. 
This method of particularizing was followed by 
Jesus. His parables are models of beauty set in 
striking relief and illustrate his power to reveal 
truth impressively and w T insomely. Jesus was no 
botanist, nor was the painting of lilies his mission; 
yet their beauty did not escape his notice. "Consider 



jo The Gospel of Beauty 

the lilies of the field, how they grow ; they toil not, 
neither do they spin ; yet I say unto you, that even 
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one 
of these." We cannot determine the kind of lily 
meant, nor is there need to discover just what flower 
was the subject of his remark. We could readily 
believe that Jesus would have said the same thing 
of the primrose, the snowdrop, the blue-bell, or the 
daisy. "Consider these flowers — consider them 
well, learn them thoroughly — how they grow." In 
the Greek the verbs are in the plural with a neuter 
nominative. This is an unusual construction and 
indicates that the lilies are viewed individually as 
living beings, almost as friends, and spoken of with 
affection and admiration. In this passage, while a 
great lesson is taught regarding the heavenly Father's 
un forgetting care, incidentally we are encouraged 
and directed to interrogate nature to learn what she 
has to teach, to gaze on her beauty and lovingly look 
at what she has to show. So we find, as it were by 
the way, in the simple words of the great Teacher, 
the germ principles of science and a lesson in art; 
though this individualizing process in the study of 
lilies is not for the sake of the lilies themselves but 
to teach the larger lesson of divine regard for the 
individual. 
In another comparison, which, with the exception 



The Principles of Beauty 71 

of the reference to the cock which crowed at Peter's 
denial, is the only passage of the Bible in which barn- 
yard fowls are expressly mentioned, the hen is 
pointed to as an emblem of God's anxious love. 
The hen gathers her own brood of young chickens 
under her wings for protection against impending 
danger. This was what Jesus desired to do for the 
people of Jerusalem, but unlike the chicks which at 
their mother's warning ran scampering to the cud- 
dling shelter of her wings, they would not. Could 
an emblem more pathetic, more illustrative have been 
chosen ? 

In further illustration of the divine care of the 
individual, the sparrow is chosen as the object lesson. 
There are two passages. To see their force these 
should be read together. "Are not two sparrows 
sold for a penny? and not one of them shall fall on 
the ground without your Father/ ' "Are not five 
sparrows sold for two pence? And not one of them 
is forgotten in the sight of God." Five for two pence, 
two for one penny; one into the bargain when you 
buy a larger number. Of such small value is the 
single sparrow that it is thrown in for the purpose 
of making the trade. That extra sparrow in the 
hands of the huckster, so small, almost without value, 
Jesus singles out and says that it is not forgotten in 
the sight of God, nor shall it fall on the ground 



72 The Gospel of Beauty 

without your Father. Could this process of partic- 
ularizing be surpassed? Could the care of the heav- 
enly Father for the individual be set forth with more 
beautiful and striking emphasis? 

On another occasion Jesus called a little child and 
set him in the midst. Fixing their attention on this 
little one, Jesus proceeded to teach his apostles some 
fundamental principles of the kingdom. He taught 
them that individuality counts in Kingdom building 
and then draws their attention to three very impor- 
tant things : they must resemble the child ; they must 
receive the child ; they must not retard the child. All 
these touch beauty in its sources. 

Take the parable of the Prodigal Son. The mov- 
ing thought in the story is the discovery and un- 
shackling of individuality. The young man, to 
begin with, is lost under the burden of possessions. 
He begins his out-going career with the prayer, 
"Father, give me the goods." The prayer was 
granted. Away he went. He journeyed far. He 
lived riotously. His substance was wasted. At 
last he came to himself. Personality began to 
emerge. The real man asserts himself, saying, "I 
will arise." Stripped of mere things, nothing left 
but himself, he starts back home. He returns to his 
father with another prayer on his lips, "Father, 
make me." What a difference between the two pray- 



The Principles of Beauty 73 

ers : "Father, give me" ; "Father, make me." The 
one was for possessions, the other for personality 
liberated. It is the story of the freeing of a soul. 
This is the gospel objective. 

The story of Jesus' transfiguration contains the 
very essence of beauty. Out of the amazing glory 
where earth and heaven meet and the voice of God is 
heard, Jesus goes down to the mountain's foot to 
heal the demoniac boy. Is it an anti-climax? Not 
so; the successive scenes of splendor and beauty lead 
up to the poor child's deliverance. Just that was 
what it was all about. The boy's deliverance is the 
culmination of the series. How finely is this whole 
conception brought out in Cowper's experience as he 
tells it in "The Task" : 

"I was a stricken deer, that left the herd 
Long since ; with many an arrow deep infixed 
My panting side was charged, when I withdrew 
To seek a tranquil death in distant shades. 
There was I found by One, who had Himself 
Been hurt by the archers. In His side he bore, 
And in His hands and feet, the cruel scars, 
With gentle force soliciting the darts, 
He drew them forth, and healed, and bade me live." 

The Beauty of Simplicity. 

This idea of individualism is germinal to the gos- 
pel. Out of it are evolved some of the great 
principles which are most highly cherished by those 
who value freedom most dearly. The soul's indi- 



74 The Gospel of Beauty 

vidual relationship with Christ is the starting point 
in the development of Christian character. Begin- 
ning at this point simplicity must be the program of 
procedure; and simplicity is the essence of beauty. 
"I fear," says Paul, "lest your minds should be cor- 
rupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." Sim- 
plicity, however, is not so simple a quality as the 
word may seem to imply. Simplicity is not obtained 
through impoverishment. Life is not simplified by 
becoming barren. Simplicity means, not meager- 
ness, but singleness; the simplifying, not the content 
of life, but of the direction of life. It is the uncom- 
plicated directness of a life which moves onward 
toward a thoroughly determined end. In the Re- 
vised Version the saying reads not "the simplicity 
that is in Christ," but "the simplicity that is toward 
Christ." The gospel reveals a life whose movement 
is Christward. It simplifies character by giving it a 
way to go — as a bird borne straight to its aim by the 
perfect balancing of its wings. It is a life that moves 
toward its source of life in Christ. It is not acci- 
dent that in the great summary of the fourth Gospel 
Jesus sets the truth between the way and the life. 
The way of Jesus leads to the truth, and the truth is 
not a doctrine merely, but a life. 

Without the way, there can be no going ; 
Without the truth, there can be no knowing ; 



The Principles of Beauty 75 

Without the life, theri can be no growing. 

Since Christ is the way, we ought to walk in him ; 

Since Christ is the truth, we ought to trust him; 

Since Christ is the life, we ought to live in him. 

Thou who art the way, lead us ; 

Thou who art the truth, teach us ; 

Thou who art the life, continue to love us and live in us. 

What complicates life is its divided aim, its double 
standard, its uncertainty of direction. Whenever a 
life turns with undeviating directness toward Christ 
then it is marked by that simplicity which is itself 
the essence of beauty. 

The Beauty of Naturalness. 

Beauty cannot be exceptional ; it must be the rule 
of life, not superficial but from within as in the case 
of the flowers with their color and fragrance. If 
"the universe is majestically unveiling, and every- 
where heaven revealing itself on earth," nowhere 
does this heaven on earth so immediately reveal 
itself as in those persons who with "the simplicity 
that is toward Christ" show that in their "conversa- 
tion in the world" they are walking in "the way, 
the truth, and the life." 

"He was known to them in the breaking of bread." 
The occasion of an ordinary meal was employed to 
make himself known to his disciples. The sugges- 
tion is beautiful. The commonplace reveals to us 
the King, and in this revelation the words of 



76 The Gospel of Beauty 

Augusta Rodin have a truer meaning still: "The 
great things in life are not the exceptional things but 
the beauties of every day which we do not stop to 
notice. These vast treasures, within our grasp, 
which we do not even touch are the things that 
count." If into my home I invite him to share with 
me the common life of the common day, through 
the hum-drum life he will make himself known to 
me. If into the kitchen he be invited, then through 
the routine ministries of house-keeping he will give 
revelations of his glory. If he be invited into the 
office, through all the mechanical details of the busi- 
ness day we shall see his appearing. If he be ad- 
mitted into the study, then his presence will redeem 
the work from formality, and dull duty will be 
changed into delightful fellowship. If he be called 
to share my pleasures, my very joys will be rarified 
by the radiance of his countenance. In his presence 
life may be lived in beauty and reverence, as when, 
in "The Holy Grail," 

"There flash'd a yellow gleam across the world, 
And where it smote the ploughshare in the field, 
The ploughman left his ploughing, and fell down 
Before it ; where it glittered on her pail, 
The milkmaid left her milking, and fell down before it." 

Let us examine a few select New Testament terms 
which carry with them the aesthetic idea in order to 
see how this life, whose movement is Christward, 



The Principles of Beauty 77 

exhibits in its processes the various phases of beauty. 
Let us think of life as a picture in the making. 
First, the attention must be fixed on the subject. 
"Looking unto Jesus'' (Heb. 12:2). The word 
means turning from all other subjects to fix the gaze 
upon one point, as when all other things are shut out 
from the field of reflection and only the object to be 
photographed is allowed in front of the camera, or as 
when the art student sits in front of a painting for 
hours to study with care the face to be copied. 
"But we all with unveiled face behold as in a mirror 
the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the 
same image from glory to glory even as the Lord 
the Spirit." "Beholding with unveiled face the 
glory of the Lord," the beholders are themselves 
rendered glorious. The transformation issues from 
glory and has glory as its result. "Seeing it is God, 
that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, who 
shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowl- 
edge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." 
When through the unveiled face the light shines in 
the heart, the face of Christ is pictured within and 
the glory of his image becomes clear-shining to 
others as the "light of the glory of God in the face of 
Jesus." This light-giving, whose seat and source of 
issue is the face of Christ, is conveyed through the 
heart to the vision of others. There is something 



78 The Gospel of Beauty 

clumsy in the mode of expression in this gorgeous 
passage, one phrase following another in long suc- 
cession, but it is majestic and brilliant like a steady 
stream of emanating light dazzling in its radiance. 
It were difficult to image a more beautiful and more 
artistic conception. Painters have striven with much 
wearisome toil to express on canvas the idea of the 
face of Jesus but here the glory and beauty of that 
face are set out in the believer's life — the canvas 
on which the face is pictured. 

And not only is life in Christ likened to the mak- 
ing of a picture, it becomes likewise a song. It is 
not to be wondered at that music has been chiefly 
advanced by Christianity and holds so large a place 
in the individual and congregational life of Chris- 
tians, when we learn that it is the logical expression 
of the deepest spirituality. "Be filled with the 
Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns 
and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in 
your heart to the Lord." The in-filling of the 
Spirit produces melody in the heart, and out of this 
heart-melody music springs as from a fountain. 
"Making melody." The word means primarily to 
twang the strings of a harp. "Be filled with the 
Spirit" . . . "making melody in your heart." Think 
of the heart as a harp whose strings are played 
on by the Spirit and you have the root idea of re- 



The Principles of Beauty 79 

ligious music. Paul says, "I will sing (make mel- 
ody) with the Spirit," that is, I will sing with my 
whole soul stirred and borne along by the Holy 
Spirit ; or, I will sing to the Spirit's accompaniment. 
Peter says, "Yea, and for this very cause adding on 
your part all diligence, in your faith supply virtue ; 
and in your virtue knowledge; and in your knowl- 
edge self-control ; and in your self-control patience ; 
and in your patience godliness ; and in your godliness 
brotherly kindness; and in your brotherly kindness 
love." "Add to" is suggestive. The Greek word 
means to form and supply a chorus, to lead a choir, 
to keep in tune. These graces are to be chorused 
into a symphony. There are eight of them, and 
they form the octave of soul tones. The first is 
faith; the last is love, an octave higher. When 
these are set in concert and played on by the Spirit, 
life's discords are cast out and harmony reigns. 

Besides this use of musical terms to describe the 
soul's internal melody, words of like import are 
found which tell what the outer conduct ought to 
be. "Let us walk by the same rule," (Phil. 3 :i6) — 
to walk as a regiment of soldiers; while rule means 
literally a flute, or the stop of a flute, a flute-note. 
The word came to have a technical meaning in 
music. In Galatians 6:16 we read, "As many as 
walk according to this rule, peace be upon them." 



80 The Gospel of Beauty 

Those who march to this music shall be saved from 
confusion and disorder. What is the rule? What 
is this peace-producing flute-note by which we are 
enjoined to march together? Is it not found in 
the 14th verse? "But far be it from me to glory 
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through 
which the world has been crucified unto me, and I 
unto the world." The rule is the rule of the cross ; 
the music is the music of self -surrender and sacrifice 
— the flute-note is that which we hear at Calvary. 
The thought is added to once more in 1 Peter 1 :22 : 
"Love one another from the heart fervently." The 
word translated "fervently" has a musical signifi- 
cance. It means to draw out, to stretch. "On the 
stretch." We are not to love one another indiffer- 
ently, as with a loose string of an unstrung instru- 
ment, but with the tension of the strings of the 
violin drawn out to their full. This accord of souls 
reaches even to heaven. "Again I say unto you, 
that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching 
anything, you shall ask, it shall be done of my 
Father who is in heaven." The word for agree 
means to sound together, to harmonize, to be in 
unison. 

Another field of beauty in which utility also 
plays an important part is that of dress. Thomas 
Carlyle was not far wrong when he said, "In this 



The Principles of Beauty 81 

one pregnant subject of clothes, rightly understood, 
is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, 
and been." With what keen adaptability is this sub- 
ject made to illustrate the symmetry and harmoni- 
ousness of Christian conduct. Simon Peter, whose 
experience in keeping the home fires burning had 
taught him something of the genuine significance 
of the feminine ward-robe, writing to wives, says, 
"Whose adorning (Greek kosmos) let it not be 
the outward adorning of braiding the hair, and of 
wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on apparel; 
but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in the 
incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, 
which is in the sight of God of great price." With 
rare skill and insight he passes, by analogy, from 
the outward adorning, such as braiding the hair, 
wearing jewels of gold, putting on apparel, upward, 
to the adorning of the heart in the incorruptible 
apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the 
sight of God of great price. Another passage of 
exquisite charm is Col. 3:12-14. It may be called 
the soul's fashion-plate, issued from heaven. 'Tut 
on." It means to clothe, to dress up, to array. 
What an outfit: compassion, kindness, lowliness, 
meekness, long suffering, forbearance, forgiveness 
— seven in number, the suit is perfect and complete. 
The soul thus arrayed appears "even as the Lord." 



82 The Gospel of Beauty 

"And above all these put on love, which is the bond 
of perfectness," that is, the girdle or belt, which at 
once holds all the beauty in harmony and unity and 
is itself a thing of finish and beauty. 

The Beauty of Freedom. 

Emerson has somewhere said that men whose 
duties are done beneath lofty and stately domes 
acquire a dignified stride and a certain stateliness of 
demeanor. Such was the life Jesus lived. Into this 
loftiness he opens the way for us, bringing us, if we 
will, into universal consciousness, into fellowship 
with God, or, better still, into friendship with God. 
Of Abraham it was said that he was the friend 
of God, that is to say, he was on friendly terms 
with God. Recall that friend and freedom are 
derived from the same root word, the Anglo-Saxon 
"freon." He is free who is the friend of God. 
Beauty must not be cramped. There must be room, 
freedom, a chance to expand. The inter-play of 
forces is necessary. Whoever has loitered in a tro- 
pical forest where the atmosphere fairly palpitates 
with plastic elements of life could not fail to observe 
the even blending of light, heat and moisture — the 
simple elements with which nature produces her 
exquisite beauty. So delicate is this poise that only 
the slightest disturbance would seem necessary to 



The Principles of Beauty 83 

coax the impatient buds into a magic bursting forth 
into beauty. The gospel offers such a balancing of 
spiritual forces, together with unrestrained free- 
dom. "The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus 
made me free from the law of sin and of death." 

In this freedom we discover that we are en rapport 
with the universe which is cooperating sympatheti- 
cally for our advancement. In the 8th Chapter of 
Romans we come upon three startling statements: 
'Tor we know that the whole creation groaneth;" 
"we ourselves groan within ourselves :" "the Spirit 
helpeth our infirmities, making intercession for us 
with groanings which cannot be uttered." Already 
having been adopted as the sons of God believers- 
are still burdened with conditions pregnant with 
temptation and sorrow. These conditions intensify 
their yearnings and make them long more vehemently 
for the complete redemption for which they wait and 
sigh. Creation itself is involved in redeemed hu- 
manity's fortunes. Far from being alien to our life 
and hopes, it is the ally of our souls, and out of all 
the pain of conflict rises the note of hope for human- 
ity's final triumph and glorification. For this con- 
summation creation groans or sighs, and this sighing 
is a testimony to the future glory which is to be 
revealed in us. 



84 The Gospel of Beauty 

"Nature in all its fullness is the Lord's. 
There are no Gentile oaks, no Pagan pines ; 
The grass beneath our feet is Christian grass; 
The wayside weed is sacred unto him. 
Have we not groaned together, herbs and men, 
Struggling through stifling earth-weights unto light, 
Earnestly longing to be clothed upon 
With one high possibility of bloom?" 

That the Spirit also groans on our behalf is a 
wonderful statement. The groanings of Christians 
find expression in their prayers ; but the intercession 
of the Spirit is with groanings that baffle the power 
of words. Do we not find here a worthy objective 
and sufficient assurance that this objective will be 
realized ? Is there not room for expression ? It is 
only the gospel that reveals a sympathy so vast and 
assistance so complete and full. Translating this 
philosophy of freedom into one of the noblest utter- 
ances of modern poetry, in his "Hymns of the 
Marshes," some of whose verses he wrote while so 
weak that he could not raise hand to mouth, Sidney 
Lanier says: 

"As the marsh hen secretly builds on the watery sod, 
Behold, I will build me a nest on the greatness of God ; 
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh hen flies 
In the freedom that fills all the space twixt the marsh 
and the skies." 

In striving to reach out to life's full boundaries 
we may find the gospel's program of beauty for us 
epitomized in the fine symbolism of the description 



The Principles of Beauty 85 

of what Luther said he wanted his coat of arms to 
be: "My coat of arms shall be a heart that has the 
color of human flesh upon it, warm with human love, 
and in it shall be planted the cross, the black cross, 
that shows the sacredness of sacrificial suffering, and 
that shall be set in a rose of the pure white — the 
purity and strength of character that God can give to 
those that suffer — and back of it all shall be that 
ground of blue that brings heaven near the earth, and 
around it shall be the golden ring of perfectness and 
eternity, as a symbol of what Jesus Christ has done 
for men." The heart of sympathy, the cross of suf- 
fering, the rose of purity, the universal background 
encircled by eternity. These are the salient features 
in the scheme of beauty which the gospel sets for 
the soul's advancement. 



V 

BEAUTY RELEASED 

Art brings into relief the beauties that have been 
more or less obscure. It is a simplification of the 
lines, a setting in place of groups otherwise invisible. 
Under its influence the mysterious grows clear, the 
confused, plain; what is complicated becomes simple, 
what is accidental, necessary. Art reveals nature 
by interpreting its intentions and formulating its 
desires. The great artist is the great simplifier. 
In such a spirit it is necessary to approach the gospel 
if its beauty is to be discovered and its meanings 
kept free from all excrescences. Much useless lum- 
ber must be dispensed with from time to time if the 
"simplicity that is toward Christ'' shall be main- 
tained. Immeasurable harm has been perpetrated 
from generation to generation because the gospel 
has not been kept in the open. Too often it has 
been mixed up in the most unartistic way with irrele- 
vant matters. 

86 



Beauty Released 87 

The Nature and Value of Symbolism. 

The artistic character of the gospel is disclosed in 
the fine symbolism of the ordinances which, when 
properly understood and observed, not only simplify 
and define, but also safeguard, the primal meanings 
of the gospel. The value of symbolism appears in 
the science of algebra, whose signs have a definite 
meaning and serve to represent certain processes and 
operations. They are a sort of picture language. 
They contribute to clearness and simplicity, and avert 
complexity and confusion. In this particular, 
algebra well illustrates the nature and use of sym- 
bolism in religion, since in mathematics, as well as 
in religion, a symbol is used not for its own sake 
but for something beyond itself. Without entering 
into a discussion of the ordinances it may be said 
that as symbols they are designed to declare certain 
spiritual features but not to procure them. Their 
worth is not intrinsic like the gold coin whose value 
is in itself, but extrinsic like the gold certificate 
whose value is not within itself but in that which it 
represents. "And thou shalt show thy son in that 
day saying, this is done because of that which the 
Lord did unto me when I came forth out of Egypt. 
And it shall be a sign unto thee upon thine hand, 
and for a memorial between thine eyes, that the 



88 The Gospel of Beauty- 

Lord's law may be in thy mouth; for with a strong 
hand hath the Lord brought you out of Egypt. 
Thou shalt therefore keep this ordinance in his 
season from year to year" (Exodus 12:8-10). It 
is seen that the Passover was an ordinance, a sign, 
a memorial. It did not exist for its own sake but 
"because of" something else. It symbolized what 
had been done in Egypt. The whole import of an 
ordinance is summed up in the words: "This is 
done because of that which the Lord did." Con- 
fusion as to the meaning of the simple algebraic 
signs would bring endless confusion in the opera- 
tions for which they stand. The meaning of a sign 
or symbol must be clear and unalterable. If the true 
meaning of baptism and the Lord's supper were 
agreed upon and guarded, the beauty of the gospel 
would be kept in the foreground and its simplicity 
more surely promoted. 

"The Last Supper" by Leonardo da Vinci in the 
monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, 
easily first among the achievements of Christian art, 
for well-nigh a century remained covered by plaster, 
the work of the disregardful, but was re-discovered 
by accident and again brought to view. As with this 
long lost painting, so the Lord's supper itself has 
often been obscured, its meaning covered over and 
lost sight of, and its purport missed through mis- 



Beauty Released 89 

conception. In recent years, by the most remarkable 
effort at restoration which history records, the ad- 
vancing destruction of the wonderful picture has 
finally been stayed and something of its beauty 
restored. It were devoutly to be wished that all 
influences tending toward the dimming of the deeper 
meanings of the Lord's supper might be arrested and 
the ordinance restored to its pristine place in Chris- 
tian thought and life. 

The most magnificent baptistery now in existence 
is that of Florence. It has a diameter of about one 
hundred feet, its gallery is supported by sixteen 
granite columns and its vault is decorated by the 
richest mosaics. Its bronze doors, which were fifty 
years in the making, are marvels of beauty. This 
structure was originally the cathedral of the city, 
built about the seventh century. The old baptismal 
font stood at the center; but, we are told, when 
Philip de Medici was immersed in it, his father, to 
the chagrin of the Florentines, had it destroyed in 
order that it might never be used again. The loca- 
tion of the font is still seen, as that part of the floor 
is plainly paved, while the rest is laid in beautiful 
patterns of black and white marble. Its vacant 
place is a monument to the ruthlessness of the man 
who destroyed it. Its destruction marred the sym- 
metry and beauty of the noble building — a reminder 



90 The Gospel of Beauty 

of the unmeasured loss which Christendom has sus- 
tained wherever the ordinance of baptism, in mode 
or design, has suffered change. In so far as mean- 
ings, foreign to the original intent, have been at- 
tached to the ordinances, their beauty has been 
blurred and their artistic design interrupted. Their 
universal restoration to the New Testament pattern 
and purposes would go far toward redefining the 
gospel in such lines of beauty as would make the 
most direct appeal to the attention of men who are 
now seeking for simplicity and sincerity in all things 
that pertain to life. 

Utilizing Life's Margins. 

The fullest disclosure of the gospel's beauty is 
made in the lives of those individuals who respond 
to the meanings of Christ as they are unfolded and 
work out in their experience an interpretation of the 
gospel which becomes actually a new revelation of 
Christ to men. Probably the world has yet to wit- 
ness the exquisite beauty and grace, to which a life 
may rise, over all whose areas the mastership of 
Jesus is allowed to extend. It is often in narrow 
places that beauty springs up, just as the daintiest 
patterns frequently are wrought into edges. In- 
deed the test of beauty, in art and in life, may be 
looked for in the margins. A famous art critic dis- 



Beauty Released 91 

courses to the point on Michael Angelo's "Holy 
Family" in the Uffizi Palace in Florence. It is a 
round picture in the center of which the family group 
is arranged. Nothing can exceed the beauty of their 
modeled forms, and the group is a masterly study. 
"Yet," says the critic, "a glance will suffice to show 
that as a painter's composition it is a total failure. 
If such a group were executed in sculpture and set 
up in a large hall, or in the open, it would leave 
little to be desired, but set in a round frame it is at 
odds with everything." The artist seems to have 
realized this when his group was finished, and so, 
to fill in the vacant spaces, he has painted numerous 
nude figures scattered promiscuously in an arid, 
rocky background. They are not connected with 
the main theme of the picture and are altogether 
inappropriate. Michael Angelo, great artist that he 
was, had not learned that a painter must work to his 
frame, and that the lines within the picture must 
harmonize with the lines that bound it, as the song 
must fit the accompaniment. No design is good 
which contains scrap, that is, space not beautiful nor 
planned in itself, but merely left over from the cut- 
ting out of something else. This is true of pictures, 
and it is true of life. A painter should work to his 
frame, and the lines within a picture should har- 
monize with the lines that bound it. Jesus taught 



92 The Gospel of Beauty 

us how to do this as regards life as he sat by the well 
of Sychar. Most of us, wearied with the journey 
and sitting by the well, would have wondered and 
worried as we waited for the disciples to return with 
the much needed food. This time of waiting was 
one of the margins of life. Jesus did not throw it 
away, nor fill it up with scrap, but utilized it, making 
his picture fit the frame. The result was his inter- 
view with the woman who came to draw water, and 
all the far-reaching events that grew out of it. Paul 
learned this lesson, for we hear him say, "I have 
learned, in whatever state I am, therewith to be con- 
tent." 

How a Life Was Wrought Into Beauty. 

Any life consecrated to such a high aim may be 
made an unfolding series of revelations of the grace 
and beauty of Christ, as is seen in the life of the 
artist, J. James Tissot. In his young life he had 
shown marvelous ability as a painter. He loved 
gaiety and dissipation and he lived in the frivolity of 
Parisian society. With wonderful skill he painted 
the events of the gay city ; and at one time he under- 
took to create a series of pictures of Parisian society 
women. Among them he had planned a picture of 
church choirs, for it was then a fad of society women 
to sing in the choirs. On Sunday morning this 



Beauty Released 93 

young artist found his way into one of the Paris 
churches to secure for himself a better understand- 
ing of the background for his choir singers. When 
the service began he bowed his head, not in reverence 
but out of mere politeness ; but politeness was turned 
into reverence, and Tissot had a vision. He saw 
the ruins of a great castle whose towers had fallen 
and everything about it was battered and broken. 
Down the roadway came a man and woman who 
found their way through these ruins and sat down 
on one of the broken stones. The man was carry- 
ing a tremendous burden. He bent beneath it and 
let it fall beside the stone where he rested. His 
wife, with a face which bore the marks of suffering 
and despair, dropped her head in her hands and 
began to sob as though her heart would break. The 
husband attempted to comfort her but in vain. Just 
then there appeared through the ruins the presence 
of a stranger. Tissot said that he had never seen 
such a face or form. Pushing his way sympathet- 
ically toward the travelers the stranger told them that 
he understood their sad plight, that he had lived their 
kind of life, had walked their pathway and had car- 
ried their burdens. He said to them, "I have only 
the deepest love for you and for all humanity. I 
have the secret of the world's salvation. I have the 
remedy for your sin and for your burden bearing.' ' 



94 The Gospel of Beauty 

This new traveler revealed himself immediately to 
the burdened and broken wayfarers as well as to the 
man who saw him in the vision. Tissot left the 
house of worship that morning and strove to free 
himself from this strange vision. He tried to paint, 
but failed. He went to eat, and could not He 
attempted to sleep, but sleep was far away. The 
next morning he returned to work, but this seemed 
impossible. At last he made a resolution to paint a 
picture of what he had seen and call it "Inward 
Visions." He painted the picture, but when he had 
placed his ideal on the canvas, the brush dropped 
from his hand, he bowed his head and wept like a 
child, saying, "I have failed, I have failed, I cannot 
paint the face and form of Christ. He went away 
from the canvas, fell on his knees before Christ, 
turned toward the cross and became a devout fol- 
lower of the Saviour. Then he said, "I can never 
again paint anything other than the message and 
mission of my Lord to this lost world." He began 
the work of his religious paintings and found that 
he could not do it unless he went to the same land 
and walked the pathways that the feet of the Son of 
God had trodden. So he went and lived in Jeru- 
salem, literally camping on the trail of Jesus. He 
took his easel out on the hillside and into the valleys, 
and painted those three hundred and sixty-five won- 



Beauty Released 95 

derful pictures called "The Life of Our Saviour 
Jesus Christ/' the like of which the world had never 
seen before. He tells us how through those experi- 
ences his hands sometimes trembled so that he could 
not hold the brush. He tells us how the holy vision 
came to his life, how he saw his Lord, how he talked 
with Christ on the Mount of Olives, how he walked 
the pathways through the land with the Son of God. 
In outlining his purpose and plan of work he inci- 
dentally tells how any Christian, by accepting as his 
ideal the truth of Christ and by yielding his emo- 
tions to be "acted on by the life of the Lord," may 
reproduce, if not in a series of paintings then other- 
wise, the divine personality of Jesus and cause him 
to live again before the eyes of men. In his own 
words the painter reveals his passionate purpose: 
"Every work, no matter what, has its own ideal ; the 
ideal of mine was truth, the truth of the life of 
Christ. To reproduce with fidelity the divine per- 
sonality of Jesus, to make him live again before the 
eyes of the spectators, to call up the very spirit which 
shone through his every act, and through all his noble 
teaching. . . . What I sought, I repeat once more, 
was to have my emotions acted on directly by the 
life of our Lord, by traversing the same districts 
as he did, by gazing upon the same landscapes, and 
by hunting out the traces of civilization, which pre- 



96 The Gospel of Beauty- 

vailed during his lifetime." The experiences of 
Tissot show how, under the dominance of the gospel, 
one's entire life, with its full scope of activities, 
may become the medium, as he says, of reproducing 
the divine personality of Jesus. Such a releasing 
of the beauty of Christ is the highest type of living. 
In the representations which I have made in these 
discursive studies, the reason for such free use of 
illustrative matter culled from the field of art is in 
the fact that art itself is, in essence, illustrative and 
sets out more clearly than any other device I could 
think of what I have conceived to be, and sought to 
define as, the Gospel of Beauty. Says Canon 
Farrar in "The Life of Christ as Represented in 
Art," "Art has had a higher function than merely 
to reflect, either the differing temperaments of its 
gifted sons, or the vicissitudes of theological opinion 
in the ages which they adorned. Every noble pic- 
ture has great lessons of its own to teach. The in- 
spiration of genius has not been thrown away. It 
has revealed to us many a lofty truth, and awakened 
in us many an ennobling emotion. The presence and 
the memory of great pictures have exercised an ele- 
vating influence over us, and have helped, as poetic 
imagination also helps, to lead us to 

'The great in conduct and the pure in thought/ " 



Beauty Released 97 

Utility and the Gospel of Beauty. 

While pictures have not only been the Bible of 
the ignorant and the poor in past ages, many being 
able to read on walls what they could not read in 
books, they have asserted their power over the more 
learned and cultured. It is true that art has often 
degenerated from her own truest ideals and sunk 
into error, irreverence and even into coarse profan- 
ity. Nothing human is perfect, and art has some- 
times apostatized, as well as religion, from the truth 
and simplicity which are in Christ Jesus. Not only 
is this true with regard to pictures, but such has been 
the case with poetry, hymnology and music; and 
preaching itself, which is one of the highest arts, has 
not always represented Christ and his message truly. 
Pictures have sometimes been sufficient to fill a whole 
life with enthusiasm. No less a person than Count 
Zinzendorf, the founder of the Moravians, has re- 
corded that one of the deepest impressions of his 
religious career was stamped upon his soul by a 
picture of the suffering Christ. 

Another branch of art which has been laid under 
tribute to Christianity is architecture, the finest 
specimens of which are to be found in church edifices. 
The pointed Gothic cathedral has been called "the 
petrifaction of the Christian religion," and has been 



98 The Gospel of Beauty 

spoken of as one of the noblest side-gifts of Chris- 
tianity to the modern world. Of all the church 
buildings in the world probably the Amiens Cathe- 
dral is the most beautiful. Ruskin calls it "the Bible 
of Amiens." In his book which bears that title he 
describes this wonderful structure. He selects as 
the noblest ideal of the Christ known to him a 
sculptured figure seen on the west front of this 
cathedral. Christ is represented as standing in the 
central point of all history and of all revelation : the 
Christ or prophesied Messiah of all the past, the 
King and Redeemer of all future times. The sculp- 
tor understood and desired to illustrate the text in 
John 20:31. "These things are written that ye 
might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of 
God, and that believing ye might have life." At his 
left is the goodly fellowship of the prophets, looking 
toward him with their faces full of yearning. At 
his right the glorious company of the apostles, their 
eyes resting on him with expression of perfect peace. 
He is not dead but living; not agonizing and cruci- 
fied, but supreme and majestic; not sickly with 
asceticism or feeble with sentimentality, but in the 
fullness of manly beauty and kingly strength. His 
right hand is uplifted to bless and not to curse, to 
help and not to smite. As Lord of the virtues he 
leads his followers ; as Conqueror of hell he subdues 



Beauty Released 99 

the vices under his feet; on either side of him and 
beneath him and around him twine and blossom the 
fruitful vine and the rose with the fullness of holy 
joy. In his left hand is the Book of the Holy Law; 
"This do and thou shalt live." Surely it was noth- 
ing else than the Christian fire which enlightened and 
inspired the work of those builders and masons, 
among whom were numbered the Free Masons who 
have a noble and honorable history unto this day. 



VI 

SPIRITUAL BEAUTY TRIUMPHANT 

There is beauty in the adjusted working together 
of the various parts of a machine to a useful end. 
There is still greater beauty in the cooperation of the 
members of a living organism, such as is seen in the 
functioning of the members of the human body. 

"Of all God's works, which do this world adorn, 
There is no one more fair and excellent 
Than a man's body, both for power and form, 
While it is kept in sober government." 

In Paul's analogy drawn between the human body 

and the body of Christ, the beauty of spiritual unity 

is set out in such expressions as "God hath set the 

members each one of them in the body, even as it 

pleased him;" "God tempered the body together ;" 

"that there should be no schism in the body;" "that 

the members should have the same care one for 

another;" "whether one member suffereth, all the 

members suffer with it." 

ioo 



Spiritual Beauty Triumphant 101 

The First Perfected Humanity: 
Chirsfs Descent Into Man. 

To get at the ground and motive of the spiritual 
unity defined by these terms let us recall that there 
are two perfected humanities presented in the New 
Testament: first, Christ in his descent into man; 
second, man in his ascent into Christ. He who ex- 
isted in the form of God emptied himself and was 
"made in the likeness of men." "The word became 
flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, 
glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of 
grace and truth." At his birth and baptism external 
witness had been borne to the perfect humanity of 
Jesus. At his transfiguration the sign came from 
within, the brightness without being the out-gleam- 
ing of the inner glory. His humanity was transfig- 
ured by the inward radiance beaming through and 
lighting it up. The event was the logical issue of a 
perfectly sinless life in which death should have had 
no place, as it would have had no place in the life of 
un fallen man; innocence, holiness, glory, forming 
the successive steps in the upward path between 
earth and heaven across which death would not even 
have cast a shadow. It is probable that if the life 
of Jesus had been detached from mankind in general, 
the transfiguration would have been the mode and 



102 The Gospel of Beauty 

beginning of his permanent glorification. The way 
into the heavens from which he was self-exiled was 
opened to him from the mount of glory. At the 
close of the transfiguration it would have seemed 
easier for him to have remained with Moses and 
Elijah in the glory realm than to have remained with 
Peter, James and John on the earth. Having moved 
steadily along the path of obedience to the point of 
obtaining the Father's approval in the words, "This 
is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased"; 
would it have been strange for his earthly life to 
have ended in some such splendid translation, the 
body of the earthly life blossoming into the body of 
the heavenly. 

But in such event a second perfected humanity 
would have been wanting. Though already in glory 
on the holy mount, he chose to pass up, not from 
thence, but by the mount of suffering and sacrifice. 
He preferred to die with and for men rather than 
live and reign without men. Moses and Elijah 
talked with him of the decease which he should ac- 
complish in Jerusalem. "Exodus" is the word 
actually used and should probably be taken as mean- 
ing his death, resurrection and ascension. His 
exodus from earth was to be, not from the mountain- 
top of transfiguration, but by another route, that of 
death, the grave, the resurrection and the ascension 



Spiritual Beauty Triumphant 103 

from Olivet. In the discourse between Jesus and 
his heavenly visitors it is seen that his death is dis- 
covered as the central thought of heaven as it is the 
one central hope of mankind. Heaven sets the cross 
of Christ in the midst. He was born thus to die. 
He lived that he might die. All the lines of his 
earthly life focalized on Calvary. He himself de- 
clared that "unto this hour came I into the world." 
And so the mount of transfiguration looks toward the 
mount of sacrifice. It marks the way to Calvary. 
Its light wreaths the cross with glory. In one of 
the earliest efforts of art to portray the transfigura- 
tion scene, the power of symbolism is admirably and 
plainly illustrated. The figure of Christ appears not 
at all, but in his place there is shadowed forth a cross 
in the center of a circle which is crowded with bril- 
liant stars. 

The Second Perfected Humanity: 
Man's Ascent Into Christ. 

Christ's perfected and divinely approved humanity 
makes possible the second perfected humanity de- 
scribed in Ephesians 4:13: "Till we all attain unto 
the unity of faith, and the knowledge of the Son of 
God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of 
the stature of the fullness of Christ." In Christ 
man is idealized in men. In the wordo of Frederick 



[104 The Gospel of Beauty 

W. Robertson, "The world was like a raft becalmed 
in the tropics; some of its freight dead and baking 
in the sun, some sucking as if for moisture from 
dried casks, and some sadly, faintly looking for a 
sail. Christ's coming to that world was as life to 
the dead, imparting a new impulse to the human 
heart and human nature." In the passage from Paul 
quoted above, the "full-grown man" is the realiza- 
tion of the gospel ideal for humanity. It is not a 
height reached by one, but by all attaining unto the 
unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of 
God unto the measure of the stature of the fullness 
of Christ. It is the composite Christian, the result- 
ant character of all those who are born into Christ, 
and in whom Christ is re-born. It is spoken of in 
Revelation under the figure of the seven stars which 
are the angels of the seven churches, called also the 
seven golden candle-sticks, in which we have a triple 
picture of the universal church, which under the 
figure of the seven golden candle-sticks burns in the 
secret of God's tabernacle, under the figure of the 
seven stars shines in the firmament, and under the 
figure of the seven angels is not only filled with 
inward vigor but exercises it outwardly, is addressed 
by Christ and commissioned to do his will. Else- 
where it is spoken of as the bride, the Lamb's wife. 
Another part of the passage quoted above indicates 



Spiritual Beauty Triumphant 105 

how we may attain unto this angel of perfected 
humanity. ''But speaking truth in love, may grow 
up in all things into him, who is the head, even 
Christ ; from whom all the body fitly framed and knit 
together through that which every joint supplieth, 
according to the working in due measure of each 
several part, maketh the increase of the body unto 
the building up of itself in love." Here is portrayed 
the most perfect cooperation and the highest possible 
achievement of which humanity is capable. Every 
word deserves the most careful study, particularly 
the expression "even Christ ; from whom all the body 
fitly framed and knit together through that which 
every joint supplieth." 

Not Only Union, but Unity. 

In the description by a popular writer of the first 
voyage of a newly built ship is illustrated how this 
community character is developed, of which a well 
organized and deeply spiritual church supplies ex- 
ample. He says that the structure of steel is a mere 
heap of bars and bolts, beams and blades, till it has 
been to sea and the different parts have learned to 
act together. Every piece in the gigantic mass has 
to find its work and learn how much its neighbor 
expects it to do of the common task. When this is 



106 The Gospel of Beauty 

done the ship has "found itself." In the same way 
the things which go to make the integrity of church 
consciousness and community character need to grow 
into coalescence through rigid efforts and exercise 
before a consistent individuality is attained. The 
illustration falls short in that the ship, as it undergoes 
its harmonizing process, is not dominated by a su- 
perior will. Let us take Longfellow's story of the 
building of Hiawatha's boat. The young chief 
stripped the bark from the birch tree, cut the boughs 
from the cedar, drew out the fibrous roots of the 
larch and extracted the resin from the bleeding fir. 
With these and other materials he constructed his 
swift gliding Cheemaun, then stained it blue and red 
and yellow with the juice of roots and berries. 

Thus the Birch Canoe was builded, 
In the valley, by the river, 
In the bosom of the forest ; 
And the forest's life was in it, 
All its mystery and its magic, 
All the lightness of the birch tree, 
All the toughness of the cedar, 
All the larch's supple sinews; 
And it floated on the river 
Like a yellow leaf in autumn, 
Like a yellow water lily. 

Paddles none had Hiawatha, 
Paddles none he had or needed, 
For his thoughts as paddles served him, 
And his wishes served to guide him; 
Swift or slow at will he glided, 
Veered to right or left at pleasure." 



Spiritual Beauty Triumphant 107 

"And the forest's life was in it." So in the build- 
ing of the church the life of humanity is focalized; 
and as Hiawatha had no paddles nor needed them, 
since his thoughts served as paddles and his wishes 
served to guide as the tall young Indian stood in his 
boat swiftly moving over the water's surface, so 
within the composite of perfected humanity Christ 
stands supreme. There is no need of external force. 
Fast and set rules are superfluous. The thoughts 
of Christ impel, his wishes guide, his pleasure is law. 
Such a church is Christ's body, tempered together 
without schism, the full-grown man, whose mea- 
surement is the stature of the fullness of Christ. 
Such a church may not, of course, be actually perfect, 
but before Christ, through his idealizing love, it is 
perfect; "even as Christ also loved the church, and 
gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it 
and that he might present the church to himself a 
glorious church; not having spot or wrinkle or any 
such thing; but that it should be holy and without 
blemish." This conception of the church shows it 
to be the embodiment of the divine in the human, 
the habitation of the Spirit, the vehicle of Christ's 
activity in human history. Read II Cor. 6:16, 
"For we are the temple of the Kving God ; even as 
God said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them ; and 
I will be their God, and they shall be my people." 



108 The Gospel of Beauty 

The ancient Hebrew temple contained no image, but 
was filled with the divine invisible presence. The 
Roman conquerors were surprised to find no image 
in the temple when they invaded its precincts, so un- 
accustomed were they to think of unseen spiritual 
realities. "We are the temple of the living God," 
that is, the God who is alive as opposed to lifeless 
idols. Not only is God alive in this temple, but he 
dwells and walks within it. 

In the pristine age described in the great Hymn 
of Creation, it is said that "the Lord God walked in 
the garden in the cool of the day." We may im- 
agine what gladsome response met his approach : the 
sunbeams kissed the bursting buds and played hide 
and seek among the primeval leaves; the flowers 
scattered their perfume through the untainted air; 
the birds carrolled their sweet and varied choruses ; 
while the unconscious insect tribes chirped and 
harped and skipped. What a record: "The Lord 
God walked in the garden in the cool of the day." 
Its meaningful spiritual counterpart occurs in this 
statement : "We are the temple of the living God, 
even as God said, I will dwell in them, and walk in 
them." God is active among his people, he does 
not stand still. He moves. He moves in us, in his 
church, as he did in his garden. The God of the 
garden does not halt nor slumber. He moves on 



Spiritual Beauty Triumphant 109 

and on. The rounds of the seasons, the ebb and 
flow of the tides, the movements of the planets, the 
recurrence of day and night, the bursting of the 
flowers, the ripening of fruit — all these are the 
movements of God in nature. In the realm of spirit 
he is equally active. He is the God of life; and of 
this life he pours out a ceaseless tidal flow as he 
dwells and walks and acts. 

The ancient temple was built of materials gathered 
from divers and diverse sources, great stones, costly 
stones and hewed stones from many a quarry ; beams 
and boards of cedar from Lebanon's heights, planks 
of fir; beautiful timber from the olive groves; and 
gold with other costly metal and very precious 
stones. These were built together in the temple in 
which Jehovah came down and dwelt. In time that 
ancient holy house crumbles, but Jehovah leaves not 
himself without a habitation; he will have a spiritual 
house not made with hands. Gathered from many 
a source, and made nigh by grace, we are builded 
into a holy temple unto Jehovah. This building 
process is the triumph of achieving grace. 

The Mystical Note. 

It is told of Stradivarius that he selected more 
than forty different kinds of wood for the making 
of his violins. So trained were his eye and touch 



no The Gospel of Beauty 

that he could detect the density of the wood, its fiber, 
age and resonant faculty with such accuracy that he 
knew just where to put each sort of wood in the 
violin. The back and the belly, the sides, the 
bridge, the keys — each part was made of a different 
kind of material, so as to insure the proper balance 
and resonance in each part of the instrument. The 
violin thereby became the home of melody. The 
pieces have been harmonized into an organic whole 
vibrating to the master's touch, the unhindering 
vehicle of the flow of music from his souL Such 
should a church be. Composed of units combined 
into a unity, it is the embodiment of the Spirit under 
whose genius it is formed. 

Is this mysticism ? Let the reply be that it is the 
mysticism of Jesus : "I am one with my Father ; ye 
shall be one with me; we will be one with you." 
Are we not in danger of losing the mystical note? 
What is religion without mysticism? — only a faded 
rose without perfume, a broken-stringed instrument, 
a marble figure lacking warmth, color, breath. 

The church is a divine institution and combines 
for practical purposes the advantages of every form 
of society into which men have been gathered. It 
is not a caste, for it despises none nor rejects none ; 
yet like caste, it preserves amidst human change a 
sacred order, in which all are kings and priests unto 



Spiritual Beauty Triumphant in 

God. It is not a secret society, for it makes no 
reserve, and yet it has its mysteries and its members 
have a hidden life and a joy with which no stranger 
can intermeddle. It is not a nation, for it selects 
individual persons from among each of the nations ; 
yet it is as clearly defined as any nation, though 
more extensive. It is not a family, and yet its bonds 
are equally tender, only they are incomparably more 
expansive and can never be severed by death. Out 
of this rich soil springs that wonderful plant, 
spiritual democracy whose legitimate fruit is re- 
ligious freedom. If this is said to be the idealism 
of a poet, a dream to be sung about, the reply is that 
it is the idealism of Jesus, who himself is the Poet of 
poets. 

"A Poet ? Aye ! If that which poets strive 
To bring to birth be nature's throb 

Of God-responding heart 
And the immortal spirit's upward drive; 
If not one measure's beat we rob 
Of deathless love or travail's sob 
Or the eternal more-than-art ; 
Oh! then he was the Poet who 
Swept ail impassioned infiniteness through." 

The Story of How an Art Was Redeemed. 

This power of the gospel to liberate and unify 
humanity is illustrated in the development of art, for 
its influence on art has been similar to its influence 
on humanity. Its moulding touch on art is more 



112 The Gospel of Beauty- 

noticeable because in art man expresses himself more 
thoroughly and more permanently than in any other 
way. In attempting partially to show how art be- 
came Christian, I call attention to the mosaics, an art 
which was known to the Greeks and even to the 
Egyptians, but owed little to either. It is essentially 
a Roman art and is substantially their only art crea- 
tion. The mosaics witnessed the advent of Chris- 
tianity, and in their development recorded its early 
influence and ideals. In essence mosaic is a design, 
pictorial or decorative, which is made by piecing 
together bits of stone or other hard material, care- 
fully selected for their color, backing them up with 
cement and polishing the surface. The Egyptians 
used mosaic for jewelry but never discovered its 
larger uses. The Greeks made floors of selected 
pebbles, forming borders and even figures by arrang- 
ing colors appropriately. To the Romans, however, 
we owe the development of mosaics into one of the 
great arts of the world. They used it for floors; 
not until later do ceilings in mosaics occur. In one 
of the finer houses of the unearthed city of Pompeii 
I have seen an example of the ancient use of mosaics. 
It is the well-known dog which guards the entrance 
to the house. In the vestibule which is paved with 
small squares of white marble is a ferocious dog 
chained to the corner of the vestibule and accom- 



Spiritual Beauty Triumphant 113 

panied by the warning motto, "Cave canem," Look 
out for the dog. The work is in plain black upon a 
white ground. In many other Roman houses ani- 
mals of every sort, reptiles, fishes and fruits were 
the objects of the artist's skill in mosaics. In the 
latter days of the Empire these subjects divided the 
honors with borders and conventional patterns. 
Often the refuse from a Roman meal was thrown on 
the floor. If fruit was served upon the stem or meat 
upon the bone, stem, peel and bone were thrown on 
the floor. And on the floor were the familiar house- 
hold pets ; not only cats and dogs, but parrots, quails, 
and guinea hens. Often a typical example of mosaic 
was what was called the mosaic of the unswept floor. 
Not only were these domestic pets represented in 
the mosaic of the dining room floor, but also the 
refuse thrown from the table. This pictorial mosaic 
was used extensively and by it were suggested the 
enjoyments of material indulgence of which the 
Romans were fond. In the words of a great art 
critic, "This art, clever, adaptable, but vulgar and 
materialistic, was the one living form of art which 
decadent Rome was able to put at the disposal of the 
new faith." It will therefore be of interest to trace 
its development under Christian influence. In the 
suburbs of Rome is the little church of Santa 
Costanza, in which, according to art critics, are the 



H4 The Gospel of Beauty 

first mosaics of Christianity. Two things are no- 
ticed. These mosaics are not on the floor beneath 
our feet but over our head in the ceiling. The 
change of position permitted the change of materials 
and so we find glass instead of the squares of marble. 
Artists tell us that this change from floor to ceiling is 
a veritable emancipation. Most of the objects pic- 
tured in the design suggest little of Christianity, but 
in a tiny niche there is discovered a figure which we 
identify as Christ. The birds, the grapes, and other 
fruit, the cups and water pitchers are superb in de- 
sign and color, but the picture of the Saviour is very 
small and may be called a failure. A sorry begin- 
ning this is of Christian art, but it was not unlike 
the beginning men were making of a Christian world. 
It would be interesting to trace the development of 
this art more minutely if time allowed, but skipping 
over several centuries we come down to a work of 
the twelfth century, which is to be seen in the Church 
of Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome. Entering 
this church to make a study of its marvelous mosaics, 
we see that the ideal of this art has been fully at- 
tained and its final triumph belongs to Christianity. 
The great dome of the church, splendid with its 
colors, is dominated by colossal figures whose beauty 
and stateliness are emphasized by every means in 
the artist's power. Some of the great Bible stories 



Spiritual Beauty Triumphant 115 

are portrayed with astonishing richness and beauty. 
The Christian symbolism is an achievement of imag- 
ination and skill. All the gorgeous designs point to 
the central figure of Christ beneath the dome. The 
harmony of it all fills one with admiration. We are 
not surprised that artists agree that this is "the most 
splendid church wall ever gazed upon by man." 

As the art of mosaics was elevated from the floors 
of Roman eating halls to the lofty ceilings of 
churches, and from the picturing of animals, food, 
and refuse, to the representing of great Bible truths 
and the figure of Christ, so the gospel unfetters men 
from earth's groveling motives to set them high in 
God's design of a perfected humanity — the response 
and counter-part of the perfected humanity of Christ. 
This upward impetus which Christianity gave to art 
is an index to that greater uplift which has been ex- 
tended to humanity. Under the influence of the 
gospel many races have been freed from the thrall- 
dom of cannibalism, idolatry, superstition, witch- 
craft, piracy, bloody shows, such as the gladiatorial 
combats, slavery, child exposure, dueling, and other 
barbarous institutions and practices; and in this 
latter day, the abolition of the liquor traffic; even 
now despite the stupid thralldom of autocracy and 
the horrid frightfulness of militarism, the gospel is 
still in the ascendant and humanity is rising despite 



n6 The Gospel of Beauty 

the exceptional reversion to barbarism of such na- 
tions as prefer to linger in the age of the cave and 
the jungle. Christian education, missions, and the 
countless benevolences are but stages in the steady 
rise of the race since the gospel took it by the hand. 
Prison reform is one of the most wonderful allevia- 
tions wrought under the teachings of him who said, 
"I was sick and in prison, and ye came unto me." 
"Let those who are condemned," says a writing of 
Constantine, "whether to the gladitorial games or to 
the mines, not be branded on the forehead that the 
majesty of the face formed in the image of Celestial 
Beauty be not dishonored." The new moral power 
in the world seemed to give a fresh dignity to the 
human countenance as having been borne by him 
who was the Son of God and who died for men. 

Probably the most far reaching and revolutionary 
change that has been wrought is in the status which 
the gospel has secured for women. With Chris- 
tianity came in a new conception of the position of 
woman. In its light woman has steadily moved 
forward into a proper recognition of her rights. As 
the full day is forecast by the rosy light of dawn, so 
this present time of woman's emancipation was pre- 
saged even in the Middle Ages by the prominence 
accorded by religious art to motherhood. The 
great religious and aesthetic conception of that period 



Spiritual Beauty Triumphant 117 

was undoubtedly that of the Holy Madonna. It is 
true that this pure and elevated conception of the 
mother of Christ ran at length to extreme and led to 
a worship of the human rather than the divine, but 
notwithstanding this blunder, it is proper for us to 
go beyond the abuses of superstition to discover that 
high and noble religious sentiment which inspired 
those marvelous and beautiful paintings of the Ma- 
donna. It is the conception of the glorified woman 
whose passions, affections, and whole nature, have 
been purified and beautified by suffering and devo- 
tion, by the pangs of earth and the joys of heaven. 
It is the wife unstained by sin, hearing in sweet 
humility the unspeakable joy that she is to bear in 
her bosom the Hope of the human race; it is the 
mother first looking upon the face of the blessed 
Infant, who is to be the joy of the whole earth; it 
is the beautified woman, rising on the rose-tinged 
clouds, every feature of the angelic face molded 
with awe and devotion and the sense of union with 
God, holding the divine Child, whose deep and 
solemn eyes seem to predict the career of suffering, 
shame and agony before him; or it is the mother 
bereft, bending in pain over the lifeless form of the 
beloved Son, but with eyes that look through tears 
to the triumph of his spirit on the earth, and to the 
glad re-union in heaven. In other words, as one 



1 1 8 The Gospel of Beauty 

stands before such a beautiful picture as Raphael's 
"Sistine Madonna," he feels that this graceful and 
noble figure with the sweet, solemn face, so pure 
and beautiful, stands for the exaltation and beautify- 
ing of motherhood. If perchance the beholder's own 
mother has already "risen beyond the empurpled 
clouds," he cannot but think of the meeting with her 
in the blessed life beyond, and as he looks into the 
deep, earnest eyes of the Infant Christ, who seems 
gazing into the vistas of eternity, he rejoices in the 
salvation brought by him, who was made flesh and 
dwelt among us. The beholder does not worship the 
Madonna, but he reverences motherhood and the 
life of him who is the soul of the universe and the 
Redeemer of men, prays for purity and worships 
God, agreeing with that art critic who for a long 
time having stood before this picture finally ex- 
claimed with deep emotion, "Now I believe in the 
Incarnation." 



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